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THE STORY OF A LIE AND 
OTHER STORIES 


♦ 









THE STORY OF A LIE 

-JIV^D OTHE% TzALES 



Boston 

SMALL, MAYNARD Sr CO. 
MCMVI1 




GIFT 

Estate of 
VICTOR S. CLARK 
SEPT. 3, 1946 

Vhe library of congress 




i 


' ‘A +) ) 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

B F the collection of stories in this vol- 
ume, The Story of a Lie now appears 
for the first time in hook form outside 
of the subscription editions. It was prepared 
for publication in 1882, but because of a dis- 
pute about the question of copyright the book 
was withdrawn. The few copies that have been 
sold from time to time were made up from such 
sheets as were preserved by the publishers and 
they are exceedingly rare, one copy, which was 
sold in 1899, bringing over one hundred and 
fifty dollars. 

The Misadventures of John Nicholson has 
heretofore been published only in paper covers 
and in the subscription editions. In it Steven- 
son makes use of his knowledge of California, 
acquired under conditions not so favorable as 
those in which he describes his hero. The story 
first appeared in the Christmas Yule-Tide for. 
1 88y. 

V 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

The Body-Snatcher was one of a series of 
stories that Stevenson designated as “crawl- 
ers.” Strange as it may seem to Americans, 
it was first published in the Pall Mall in 1884, 
as a Christmas story. Stevenson spoke of it as 
“blood-curdling enough -and ugly enough -to 
chill the blood of a Grenadier.” The publishers 
were so well pleased with it that they sent an 
honorarium which Stevenson thought so excess- 
ive that he returned a portion of it. T he method 
of advertising adopted by the Pall Mall was 
not at all to Stevenson's liking and he protested 
against it. The method was as ghastly as the 
story itself. Six skulls were made by a theat- 
rical property-man. Six pairs of coffin lids, 
painted deadly black, with white skulls and 
cross-bones in the center for relief, were sup- 
plied by a carpenter. Six long white surplices 
were purchased from a funeral establishment. 
Six sandwich-men were hired at double rates. 
This procession was suppressed by the police. 


V? 



FIRST COLLECTED EDITION 

Herbert B. Turner & Co., Boston, 1904 

Originally Published 

I The Story of a Lie 

New Quarterly Magazine, October, 1879 

1 1 The Misadventures of John Nicholson 
Christmas Yule-Tide, 1887 

III The Body-Snatcher 

Pall Mall, Christmas Extra, 1884 


















CONTENTS 

I The Story of a Lie i 

II The Misadventures of John 

Nicholson i i i 

III The Body-Snatcher 237 






























































































































































































































THE STORY OF A LIE 














































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THE STORY OF A LIE 
I 

INTRODUCES THE ADMIRAL 

HEN Dick Naseby was in Paris he 
made some odd acquaintances, for 
he was one of those who have ears 
to hear, and can use their eyes no less 
than their intelligence. He made as many 
thoughts as Stuart Mill; but his philosophy 
concerned flesh and blood, and was ex- 
perimental as to its method. He was a type- 
hunter among mankind. He despised small 
game and insignificant personalities, whether 
in the shape of dukes or bagmen, letting 
them go by like seaweed; but show him a 
refined or powerful face, let him hear a 
plangeni or a penetrating voice, fish for 
him with a living look in some one's eye, 
a passionate gesture, a meaning or ambigu- 
ous smile, and his mind was instantaneously 
awakened. “ There was a man, there was a 



THE STORY OF A LIE 

woman/' he seemed to say, and he stood up 
to the task of comprehension with the de- 
light of an artist in his art. 

And indeed, rightly considered, this in- 
terest of his was an artistic interest. There 
is no science in the personal study of human 
nature. All comprehension is creation; the 
woman I love is somewhat of my handi- 
work; and the great lover, like the great 
painter, is he that can so embellish his sub- 
je6t as to make her more than human, 
whilst yet by a cunning art he has so based 
his apotheosis on the nature of the case that 
the woman can go on being a true woman, 
and give her charafter free play, and show 
littleness or cherish spite, or be greedy of 
common pleasures, and he continue to wor- 
ship without a thought of incongruity. To 
love a character is only the heroic way of 
understanding it. When we love, by some 
noble method of our own or some nobility 
of mien or nature in the other, we appre- 
hend the loved one by what is noblest in 
ourselves. When we are merely studying an 
eccentricity, the method of our study is but 
a series of allowances. To begin to under- 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
stand is to begin to sympathise; for com- 
prehension comes only when we have stated 
another's faults and virtues in terms of our 
own. Hence the proverbial toleration of 
artists for their own evil creations. Hence, 
too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a 
high-minded creature, and as scrupulous 
and brave a gentleman as you would want 
to meet, held in a sort of affedfion the vari- 
ous human creeping things whom he had 
met and studied. 

One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, 
an English-speaking, two-legged animal of 
the international genus, and by profession 
of general and more than equivocal utility. 
Years before he had been a painter of some 
standing in a colony, and portraits signed 
“Van Tromp" had celebrated the great- 
ness of colonial governors and judges. In 
those days he had been married and driven 
his wife and infant daughter in a pony 
trap. What were the steps of his declen- 
sion? No one exactly knew. Here he was 
at least, and had been, any time these past 
ten years, a sort of dismal parasite upon the 
foreigner in Paris. 


3 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

It would be hazardous to specify his exaCt 
industry. Coarsely followed, it would have 
merited a name grown somewhat unfamiliar 
to our ears. Followed as he followed it, with 
a skilful reticence, in a kind of social chiar- 
oscuro, it was still possible for the polite to 
call him a professional painter. His lair was 
in the Grand Hotel and the gaudiest cafCs. 
There he might be seen jotting off a sketch 
with an air of some inspiration; and he was 
always affable, and one of the easiest of men 
to fall in talk withal. A conversation usually 
ripened into a peculiar sort of intimacy, and 
it was extraordinary how many little ser- 
vices Van Tromp contrived to render in the 
course of six-and-thirty hours. He occu- 
pied a position between a friend and a cou- 
rier, which made him worse than embarrass- 
ing to repay. But those whom he obliged 
could always buy one of his villainous little 
pictures, or, where the favours had been 
prolonged and more than usually delicate, 
might order and pay for a large canvas, 
with perfect certainty that they would hear 
no more of the transaction. 

Among resident artists he enjoyed the 
4 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
celebrity of a non-professional sort. He had 
spent more money — no less than three in- 
dividual fortunes, it was whispered — than 
any of his associates could ever hope to 
gain. Apart from his colonial career, he had 
been to Greece in a brigantine with four 
brass carronades; he had travelled Europe 
in a chaise-and-four, drawing bridle at the 
palace doors of German princes; queens of 
song and dance had followed him like sheep 
and paid his tailor's bills. And to behold 
him now, seeking small loans with plaintive 
condescension, sponging for breakfast on an 
art student of nineteen, a fallen Don Juan 
who had neglefted to die at the propitious 
hour, had a colour of romance for young 
imaginations. His name and his bright past, 
seen through the prism of whispered gossip, 
had gained him the nickname of The Ad- 
miral. 

Dick found him one day at the receipt of 
custom, rapidly painting a pair of hens and 
a cock in a little water-colour sketching- 
box, and now and then glancing at the ceil- 
ing like a man who should seek inspiration 
from the muse. Dick thought it remarkable 

5 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

that a painter should choose to work over 
an absinthe in a public cafe, and looked the 
man over. The aged rakishness of his ap- 
pearance was set off by a youthful costume ; 
he had disreputable grey hair and a dis- 
reputable, sore, red nose; but the coat and 
the gesture, the outworks of the man, were 
still designed for show. Dick came up to his 
table and inquired if he might look at what 
the gentleman was doing. No one was so 
delighted as the Admiral. 

“A bit of a thing/' said he. “I just dash 
them off like that. I — I dash them off," 
he added, with a gesture. 

“ Quite so," said Dick, who was appalled 
by the feebleness of the production. 

“Understand me," continued Van Tromp, 
“I am a man of the world. And yet — once 
an artist always an artist. All of a sudden a 
thought takes me in the street; I become its 
prey; it's like a pretty woman; no use to 
struggle; I must — dash it off." 

“ I see," said Dick. 

“Yes," pursued the painter; “it all comes 
easily, easily to me; it is not my business; 
it's a pleasure. Life is my business — life — 
6 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

this great city, Paris — Paris after dark — 
its lights, its gardens, its odd corners. Aha Y 
he cried, “to be young again! The heart is 
young, but the heels are leaden. A poor, 
mean business, to grow old! Nothing re- 
mains but the coup d’oeil, the contemplative 

man's enjoyment, Mr. ,'' and he paused 

for the name. 

“Naseby,” returned Dick. 

The other treated him at once to an ex- 
citing beverage, and expatiated on the 
pleasure of meeting a compatriot in a foreign 
land; to hear him you would have thought 
they had encountered in Central Africa. 
Dick had never found any one take a fancy 
to him so readily, nor show it in an easier 
or less offensive manner. He seemed tickled 
with him as an elderly fellow about town 
might be tickled by a pleasant and witty 
lad; he indicated that he was no precisian, 
but in his wildest times had never been such 
a blade as he thought Dick. Dick protested, 
but in vain. This manner of carrying an in- 
timacy at the bayonet's point was Van 
Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man 
he insinuated himself; with youth he im- 

7 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

posed himself, and in the same breath im- 
posed an ideal on his vidtim, who saw that 
he must work up to it or lose the esteem of 
this old and vicious patron. And what young 
man can bear to lose a character for vice? 

At last, as it grew towards dinner-time, 
“Do you know Paris?” asked Van Tromp. 

“Not so well as you, I am convinced,” 
said Dick. 

“And so am I,” returned Van Tromp 
gaily. 

“ Paris ! My young friend — you will allow 
me? — when you know Paris as I do, you 
will have seen Strange Things. I say no 
more; all I say is, Strange Things. We are 
men of the world, you and I, and in Paris, 
in the heart of civilised existence. This is an 
opportunity, Mr. Naseby. Let us dine. Let 
me show you where to dine.” 

Dick consented. On the way to dinner the 
Admiral showed him where to buy gloves, 
and made him buy them; where to buy 
cigars, and made him buy a vast store, 
some of which he obligingly accepted. At 
the restaurant he showed him what to order, 
with surprising consequences in the bill. 

8 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

What he made that night by his percentages 
it would be hard to estimate. And all the 
while Dick smilingly consented, understand- 
ing well that he was being done, but taking 
his losses in the pursuit of chara<5ter, as a 
hunter sacrifices his dogs. As for the Strange 
Things, the reader will be relieved to hear 
that they were no stranger than might have 
been expected, and he may find things quite 
as strange without the expense of a Van 
Tromp for guide. Yet he was a guide of no 
mean order, who made up for the poverty 
of what he had to show by a copious, imag- 
inative commentary. 

"And such,” said he with a hiccup, "such 
is Paris.” 

"Pooh!” said Dick, who was tired of the 
performance. 

The Admiral hung an ear, and looked up 
sidelong with a glimmer of suspicion. 

"Good-night,” said Dick; "Pm tired.” 

"So English!” cried Van Tromp, clutch- 
ing him by the hand. "So English! So blase! 
Such a charming companion! Let me see 
you home.” 

"Look here,” returned Dick, "I have 


9 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

said good-night, and now I’m going. You’re 
an amusing old boy; I like you, in a sense; 
but here’s an end of it for to-night. Not 
another cigar, not another grog, not another 
percentage out of me.” 

“\ beg your pardon!” cried the Admiral 
with dignity. 

“Tut, man!” said Dick; “you’re not 
offended; you’re a man of the world, I 
thought. I’ve been studying you, and it’s 
over. Have I not paid for the lesson? Au 
revoir.” 

Van Tromp laughed gaily, shook hands 
up to the elbows, hoped cordially they 
would meet again and that often, but looked 
after Dick as he departed with a tremor of 
indignation. After that they two not un- 
frequently fell in each other’s way, and Dick 
would often treat the old boy to breakfast 
on a moderate scale and in a restaurant of 
his own selection. Often, too, he would lend 
Van Tromp the matter of a pound, in view 
of that gentleman’s contemplated depar- 
ture for Australia; there would be a scene of 
farewell almost touching in character, and 
a week or a month later they would meet on 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

the same boulevard without surprise or em- 
barrassment. And in the meantime Dick 
learned more about his acquaintance on all 
sides; heard of his yacht, his chaise-and-four, 
his brief season of celebrity amid a more 
confiding population, his daughter, of whom 
he loved to whimper in his cups, his spong- 
ing, parasitical, nameless way of life; and 
with each new detail something that was 
not merely interest nor yet altogether affec- 
tion grew up in his mind towards this dis- 
reputable stepson of the arts. Ere he left 
Paris Van Tromp was one of those whom he 
entertained to a farewell supper; and the 
old gentleman made the speech of the even- 
ing, and then fell below the table, weeping, 
smiling, paralysed. 


II 

A LETTER TO THE PAPERS 

Old Mr. Naseby had the sturdy, un- 
tutored nature of the upper middle class. 
The universe seemed plain to him. “The 
thing’s right,” he would say, or “the thing’s 
wrong”; and there was an end of it. There 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

was a contained, prophetic energy in his 
utterances, even on the slightest affairs; 
he saw the damned thing; if you did not, it 
must be from perversity of will; and this 
sent the blood to his head. Apart from this, 
which made him an exacting companion, he 
was one of the most upright, hot-tempered 
old gentlemen in England. Florid, with 
white hair, the face of an old Jupiter, and 
the figure of an old fox-hunter, he enlivened 
the Vale of Thyme from end to end on his 
big, cantering chestnut. 

He had a hearty respedt for Dick as a lad 
of parts. Dick had a respedt for his father 
as the best of men, tempered by the politic 
revolt of a youth who has to see to his own 
independence. Whenever the pair argued, 
they came to an open rupture; and argu- 
ments were frequent, for they were both 
positive, and both loved the work of the in- 
telligence. It was a treat to hear Mr. Naseby 
defending the Church of England in a volley 
of oaths, or supporting ascetic morals with 
an enthusiasm not entirely innocent of port 
wine. Dick used to wax indignant, and none 
the less so because, as his father was a skil- 


12 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

ful disputant, he found himself not seldom 
in the wrong. On these occasions he would 
redouble in energy, and declare that black 
was white, and blue yellow, with much con- 
viction and heat of manner; but in the morn- 
ing such a licence of debate weighed upon 
him like a crime, and he would seek out his 
father, where he walked before breakfast 
on a terrace overlooking all the Vale of 
Thyme. 

“ I have to apologize, sir, for last night 
” he would begin. 

“Of course you have/' the old gentleman 
would cut in cheerfully. “You spoke like a 
fool. Say no more about it.” 

“You do not understand me, sir. I refer 
to a particular point. I confess there is much 
force in your argument from the doCtrine of 
possibilities.” 

“Of course there is,” returned his father. 
“Come down and look at the stables. Only,” 
he would add, “bear this in mind, and do 
remember that a man of my age and ex- 
perience knows more about what he is say- 
ing than a raw boy.” 

He would utter the word “boy” even 

13 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

more offensively than the average of fathers, 
and the light way in which he accepted these 
apologies cut Dick to the heart. The latter 
drew slighting comparisons, and remem- 
bered that he was the only one who ever 
apologised. This gave him a high station in 
his own esteem, and thus contributed in- 
directly to his better behaviour; for he was 
scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and 
prided himself on nothing more than on a 
just submission. 

So things went on until the famous occa- 
sion when Mr. Naseby, becoming engrossed 
in securing the election of a sound party 
candidate to Parliament, wrote a flaming 
letter to the papers. The letter had about 
every demerit of party letters in general: it 
was expressed with the energy of a believer; 
it was personal; it was a little more than half 
unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old 
man did not mean to say what was untrue, 
you may be sure; but he had rashly picked 
up gossip, as his prejudice suggested, and 
now rashly launched it on the public with 
the sanction of his name. 

“The Liberal candidate/' he concluded, 


14 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

*'is thus a public turncoat. Is that the sort 
of man we want? He has been given the lie, 
and has swallowed the insult. Is that the 
sort of man we want? I answer, No! with 
all the force of my conviction, I answer, 
No!” 

And then he signed and dated the letter 
with an amateur's pride, and looked to be 
famous by the morrow. 

Dick, who had heard nothing of the mat- 
ter, was up first on that inauspicious day, 
and took the journal to an arbour in the 
garden. He found his father's manifesto in 
one column; and in another a leading article. 
“No one that we are aware of," ran the 
article, “had consulted Mr. Naseby on the 
subjeCf, but if he had been appealed to by 
the whole body of electors, his letter would 
be none the less ungenerous and unjust to 
Mr. Dalton. We do not choose to give the 
lie to Mr. Naseby, for we are too well aware 
of the consequences, but we shall venture 
instead to print the faCts of both cases re- 
ferred to by this red-hot partisan in another 
portion of our issue. Mr. Naseby is of course 
a large proprietor in our neighbourhood: 

15 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

but fidelity to fadts, decent feeling, and Eng- 
lish grammar, are all of them qualities more 
important than the possession of land. Mr. 

N is doubtless a great man ; in his large 

gardens and that half mile of greenhouses, 
where he has probably ripened his intellect 
and temper, he may say what he will to his 
hired vassals, but (as the Scots say) — 

here 

He maunna think to domineer. 

Liberalism,” continued the anonymous jour- 
nalist, “ is of too free and sound a growth,” etc. 

Richard Naseby read the whole thing 
from beginning to end; and a crushing shame 
fell upon his spirit. His father had played 
the fool ; he had gone out noisily to war, and 
come back with confusion. The moment that 
his trumpets sounded, he had been disgrace- 
fully unhorsed. There was no question as to 
the fadts; they were one and all against the 
Squire. Richard would have given his ears 
to have suppressed the issue; but as that 
could not be done, he had his horse saddled, 
and, furnishing himself with a convenient 
staff, rode off at once to Thymebury. 

16 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

The editor was at breakfast in a large, sad 
apartment. The absence of furniture, the 
extreme meanness of the meal, and the hag- 
gard, bright-eyed, consumptive look of the 
culprit, unmanned our hero; but he clung 
to his stick and was stout and war-like. 

“You wrote the article in this morning's 
paper?" he demanded. 

“You are young Mr. Naseby? I pub- 
lished it," replied the editor, rising. 

“My father is an old man," said Richard; 
and then with an outburst, “And a damned 
sight finer fellow than either you or Dalton !" 
He stopped and swallowed; he was deter- 
mined that all should go with regularity. “ I 
have but one question to put to you, sir," 
he resumed. “Granted that my father was 
misinformed, would it not have been more 
decent to withhold the letter and communi- 
cate with him in private?" 

“Believe me," returned the editor, “that 
alternative was not open to me. Mr. Naseby 
told me in a note that he had sent his letter 
to three other journals, and in fa<5f threat- 
ened me with what he called exposure if I 
kept it back from mine. I am really con- 

17 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

cerned at what has happened; I sympathise 
and approve of your emotion, young gentle- 
man; but the attack on Mr. Dalton was 
gross, very gross, and I had no choice but to 
offer him my columns to reply. Party has its 
duties, sir ," added the scribe, kindling as 
one who should propose a sentiment; “ and 
the attack was gross/' 

Richard stood for half a minute digesting 
the answer; and then the god of fair play 
came uppermost in his heart, and, murmur- 
ing “Good-morning," he made his escape 
into the street. 

His horse was not hurried on the way 
home, and he was late for breakfast. The 
Squire was standing with his back to the fire 
in a state bordering on apoplexy, his fingers 
violently knitted under his coat-tails. As 
Richard came in, he opened and shut his 
mouth like a codfish, and his eyes protruded. 

“You have seen that, sir?" he cried, nod- 
ding towards the paper. 

“Yes, sir," said Richard. 

“Oh, you've read it, have you?" 

“Yes; I have read it," replied Richard, 
looking at his foot. 

18 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Well,” demanded the old gentleman, 
“and what have you to say to it, sir?” 

“You seem to have been misinformed,” 
said Dick. 

“Well? What then? Is your mind so 
sterile, sir? Have you not a word of com- 
ment? no proposal?” 

“1 fear, sir, you must apologise to Mr. 
Dalton. It would be more handsome, in- 
deed, it would be only just, and a free 

acknowledgment would go far ” Richard 

paused, no language appearing delicate 
enough to suit the case. 

“That is a suggestion which should have 
come from me, sir,” roared the father. “It 
is out of place upon your lips. It is not the 
thought of a loyal son. Why, sir, if my 
father had been plunged in such deplorable 
circumstances, I should have thrashed the 
editor of that vile sheet within an inch of 
his life. I should have thrashed the man, sir. 
It would have been the aCtion of an ass; but 
it would have shown that I had the blood 
and the natural affections of a man. Son? 
You are no son, no son of mine, sir!” 

“Sir!” said Dick. 


19 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“ I'll tell you what you are, sir,” pursued 
the Squire. “ You’re a Benthamite. I dis- 
own you. Your mother would have died for 
shame; there was no modern cant about 
your mother; she thought — she said to me, 
sir — I’m glad she’s in her grave, Dick 
Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed, sir? 
Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural 
affedtions? Are you clockwork, hey? Away! 
This is no place for you. Away!” (waving 
his hands in the air) '‘Go away! Leave me!” 

At this moment Dick beat a retreat in a 
disarray of nerves, a whistling and clamour 
of his own arteries, and in short in such a 
final bodily disorder as made him alike in- 
capable of speech or hearing. And in the 
midst of all this turmoil, a sense of unpar- 
donable injustice remained graven in his 
memory. 

Ill 

IN THE ADMIRALS NAME 

There was no return to the subjedL Dick 
and his father were henceforth on terms of 
coldness. The upright old gentleman grew 
more upright when he met his son, buck- 


20 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
ramed with immortal anger; he asked after 
Dick’s health, and discussed the weather 
and the crops with an appalling courtesy; 
his pronunciation was point-device , his voice 
was distant, distindt, and sometimes almost 
trembling with suppressed indignation. 

As for Dick, it seemed to him as if his life 
had come abruptly to an end. He came out of 
his theories and clevernesses; his prema- 
ture man-of-the-worldness, on which he had 
prided himself on his travels, “ shrank like 
a thing ashamed” before this real sorrow. 
Pride, wounded honour, pity and respedt 
tussled together daily in his heart; and now 
he was within an ace of throwing himself 
upon his father’s mercy, and now of slipping 
forth at night and coming back no more to 
Naseby House. He suffered from the sight 
of his father, nay, even from the neighbour- 
hood of this familiar valley, where every 
corner had its legend, and he was besieged 
with memories of childhood. If he fled into 
a new land, and among none but strangers, 
he might escape his destiny, who knew? and 
begin again light-heartedly. From that chief 
peak of the hills, that now and then, like an 


21 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

uplifted finger, shone in an arrow of sun- 
light through the broken clouds, the shep- 
herd in clear weather might perceive the 
shining of the sea. There, he thought, was 
hope. But his heart failed him when he saw 
the Squire; and he remained. His fate was 
not that of the voyager by sea and land; he 
was to travel in the spirit, and begin his 
journey sooner than he supposed. 

For it chanced one day that his walk led 
him into a portion of the uplands which was 
almost unknown to him. Scrambling through 
some rough woods, he came out upon a 
moorland reaching towards the hills. A few 
lofty Scots firs grew hard by upon a knoll; 
a clear fountain near the foot of the knoll 
sent up a miniature streamlet which me- 
andered in the heather. A shower had just 
skimmed by, but now the sun shone brightly, 
and the air smelt of the pines and the grass. 
On a stone under the trees sat a young lady 
sketching. We have learned to think of 
women in a sort of symbolic transfiguration, 
based on clothes; and one of the readiest 
ways in which we conceive our mistress is as 
a composite thing, principally petticoats. 


22 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

But humanity has triumphed over clothes; 
the look, the touch of a dress has become 
alive; and the woman who stitched herself 
into these material integuments has now 
permeated right through and gone out to 
the tip of her skirt. It was only a black dress 
that caught Dick Naseby’s eye; but it took 
possession of his mind, and all other 
thoughts departed. He drew near and the 
girl turned around. Her face startled him; 
it was a face he wanted; and he took it in 
at once like breathing air. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said, taking off 
his hat, “you are sketching.” 

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “for my own 
amusement. I despise the thing.” 

“Ten to one you do yourself injustice,” 
returned Dick. “ Besides, it's a freemasonry. 
I sketch myself, and you know what that 
implies.” 

“No. What?” she asked. 

“Two things,” he answered. “First, that 1 
am no very difficult critic; and second, that 
I have a right to see your picture.” 

She covered the block with both her 
hands. “Oh no,” she said; “ I am ashamed.” 


23 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Indeed, I might give you a hint/’ said 
Dick. “Although no artist myself, I have 
known many; in Paris I had many for 
friends, and used to prowl among studios.” 

“ In Paris?” she cried, with a leap of light 
into her eyes. “Did you ever meet Mr. Van 
Tromp?” 

“I? Yes. Why, you are not the Admiral’s 
daughter, are you?” 

“The Admiral? Do they call him that?” 
she cried. “Oh, how nice, how nice of them! 
It is the younger men who call him so, is it 
not?” 

“Yes,” said Dick, somewhat heavily. 

“You can understand now,” she said, 
with an unspeakable accent of contented 
and noble-minded pride, “why it is I do not 
choose to show my sketch. Van Tromp’s 
daughter! The Admiral’s daughter! I de- 
light in that name. The Admiral ! And so you 
know my father?” 

“Well,” said Dick, “I met him often; we 
were even intimate. He may have mentioned 
my name — Naseby.” 

“ He writes so little. He is so busy, so de- 
voted to his art! I have had a half wish,” 


24 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

she added, laughing, “that my father was a 
plainer man, whom I could help — to whom 
I could be a credit ; but only sometimes, you 
know, and with only half my heart. For a 
great painter! You have seen his works?” 

“ I have seen some of them,” returned 
Dick; “they — they are very nice.” 

She laughed aloud. “Nice?” she repeated. 
“ I see you don't care much for art.” 

“Not much,” he admitted; “but I know 
that many people are glad to buy Mr. Van 
Tromp’s pidtures.” 

“Call him the Admiral!” she cried. “It 
sounds kindly and familiar; and I like to 
think that he is appreciated and looked up 
to by young painters. He has not always 
been appreciated; he had a cruel life for 
many years; and when I think” — there 
were tears in her eyes — “when I think of 
that, I feel inclined to be a fool,” she broke 
off. “And now I shall go home. You have 
filled me full of happiness; for think, Mr. 
Naseby, I have not seen my father since I 
was six years old; and yet he is in my 
thoughts all day! You must come and call 
on me; my aunt will be delighted, I am sure; 

25 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

and then you will tell me all — all about 
my father, will you not?” 

Dick helped her to get her sketching traps 
together; and when all was ready she gave 
Dick her hand and a frank return of pres- 
sure. 

“You are my father’s friend,” she said; 
“we shall be great friends too. You must 
come and see me soon.” 

Then she was gone down the hillside at a 
run; and Dick stood by himself in a state 
of some bewilderment and even distress. 
There were elements of laughter in the busi- 
ness; but the black dress, and the face that 
belonged to it, and the hand that he had 
held in his, inclined him to a serious view. 
What was he, under the circumstances, 
called upon to do? Perhaps to avoid the 
girl? Well, he would think about that. Per- 
haps to break the truth to her? Why, ten 
to one, such was her infatuation, he would 
fail. Perhaps to keep up the illusion, to 
colour the raw fa£ts; to help her to false 
ideas, while yet not plainly stating false- 
hoods? Well, he would see about that; he 
would also see about avoiding the girl. He 

26 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

saw about this last so well, that the next 
afternoon beheld him on his way to visit her. 

In the meantime the girl had gone straight 
home, light as a bird, tremulous with joy, 
to the little cottage where she lived alone 
with a maiden aunt; and to that lady, a 
grim, sixty years old Scotswoman, with a 
nodding head, communicated news of her 
encounter and invitation. 

“A friend of his?” cried the aunt. “What 
like is he? What did he say was his name?” 

She was dead silent, and stared at the old 
woman darkling. Then very slowly, “ I said 
he was my father's friend; I have invited 
him to my house, and come he shall,” she 
said; and with that she walked off to her 
room, where she sat staring at the wall all 
the evening. Miss M'Glashan, for that was 
the aunt's name, read a large bible in the 
kitchen with some of the joys of martyrdom. 

It was perhaps half-past three when 
Dick presented himself, rather scrupulously 
dressed, before the cottage door; he knocked, 
and a voice bade him enter. The kitchen, 
which opened directly off the garden, was 
somewhat darkened by foliage; but he could 

27 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

see her as she approached from the far end 
to meet him. This second sight of her sur- 
prised him. Her strong black brows spoke 
of temper easily aroused and hard to quiet; 
her mouth was small, nervous, and weak; 
there was something dangerous and sulky 
underlying, in her nature, much that was 
honest, compassionate and even noble. 

“My father’s name,” she said, “has made 
you very welcome.” 

And she gave him her hand with a sort 
of curtsey. It was a pretty greeting, although 
somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself 
among the gods. She led him through the 
kitchen to a parlour, and presented him to 
Miss M’Glashan. 

“Esther,” said the aunt, “see and make 
Mr. Naseby his tea.” 

As soon as the girl was gone upon this 
hospitable intent, the old woman crossed the 
room and came quite near to Dick as if in 
menace. 

“Ye know that man?” she asked, in an 
imperious whisper. 

“Mr. Van Tromp?” said Dick. “Yes; 1 
know him.” 


28 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Well, and what brings ye here?” she 
said. “ I couldn’t save the mother — her 
that’s dead — but the bairn!” She had a 
note in her voice that filled poor Dick with 
consternation. “Man,” she went on, “what 
is it now? Is it money?” 

“My dear lady,” said Dick. “I think you 
misinterpret my position. I am young Mr. 
Naseby of Naseby House. My acquaintance 
with Mr. Van Tromp is really very slender; 
I am only afraid that Miss Van Tromp has 
exaggerated our intimacy in her own imagi- 
nation. I know positively nothing of his 
private affairs, and do not care to know. I 
met him casually in Paris — that is all.” 

Miss M’Glashan drew a long breath. “In 
Paris?” she said. “Well, and what do 
you think of him? — what do ye think of 
him?” she repeated, with a different scan- 
sion, as Richard, who had not much taste 
for such a question, kept her waiting for an 
answer. 

“I found him a very agreeable com- 
panion,” he said. 

“Ay,” said she, “did ye! And how does 
he win his bread?” 


29 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“I fancy,” he gasped, “that Mr. Van 
Tromp has many generous friends.” 

“I'll warrant!” she sneered; and before 
Dick could find more to say, she was gone 
from the room. 

Esther returned with the tea-things, and 
sat down. 

“Now,” she said cosily, “tell me all about 
my father.” 

“He” — stammered Dick, “he is a very 
agreeable companion.” 

“I shall begin to think it is more than 
you are, Mr. Naseby,” she said, with a 
laugh. “ I am his daughter, you forget. Be- 
gin at the beginning, and tell me all you 
have seen of him, all he said and all you 
answered. You must have met somewhere; 
begin with that.” 

So with that he began: how he had found 
the Admiral painting in a cafe; how his art 
so possessed him that he could not wait till 
he got home to — well, to dash off his idea; 
how (this in reply to a question) his idea 
consisted of a cock crowing and two hens 
eating corn; how he was fond of cocks and 
hens; how this did not lead him to neglect 
3 ® 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

more ambitious forms of art ; how he had a 
picture in his studio of a Greek subjedf which 
was said to be remarkable from several 
points of view; how no one had seen it nor 
knew the precise site of the studio in which 
it was being vigorously though secretly con- 
fedted; how (in answer to a suggestion) this 
shyness was common to the Admiral, Michel- 
angelo, and others; how they (Dick and 
Van Tromp) had struck up an acquaintance 
at once, and dined together that same night ; 
how he (the Admiral) had once given money 
to a beggar; how he spoke with effusion of 
his little daughter; how he had once bor- 
rowed money to send her a doll — a trait 
worthy of Newton — she being then in 
her nineteenth year at least; how, if the 
doll never arrived (which it appeared it 
never did), the trait was only more charac- 
teristic of the highest order of creative in- 
tellect ; how he was — no, not beautiful — 
striking, yes, Dick would go so far, decidedly 
striking in appearance; how his boots were 
made to lace and his coat was black, not 
cutaway, a frock; and so on, and so on by 
the yard. It was astonishing how few lies 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

were necessary. After all, people exaggerated 
the difficulty of life. A little steering, just a 
touch of the rudder now and then, and with 
a willing listener there is no limit to the do- 
main of equivocal speech. Sometimes Miss 
M’Glashan made a freezing sojourn in the 
parlour; and then the task seemed un- 
accountably more difficult; but to Esther, 
who was all eyes and ears, her face alight 
with interest, his stream of language flowed 
without break or stumble, and his mind 
was ever fertile in ingenious evasions and 

What an afternoon it was for Esther! 

“Ah!” she cried at last, “it's good to 
hear all this! My aunt, you should know, is 
narrow and too religious; she cannot under- 
stand an artist's life. It does not frighten 
me,” she added grandly; “1 am an artist’s 
daughter.” 

With that speech, Dick consoled himself 
for his imposture; she was not deceived so 
grossly after all; and then, if a fraud, was 
not the fraud piety itself? — and what 
could be more obligatory than to keep alive 
in the heart of a daughter that filial trust 
and honor which, even although misplaced, 
3 2 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
became her like a jewel of the mind? There 
might be another thought, a shade of 
cowardice, a selfish desire to please; poor 
Dick was merely human; and what would 
you have had him do? 

IV 

ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION 

A month later Dick and Esther met at 
the stile beside the cross roads; had there 
been any one to see them but the birds and 
summer insedfs, it would have been re- 
marked that they met after a different 
fashion from the day before. Dick took her 
in his arms, and their lips were set together 
for a long while. Then he held her at arm's 
length, and they looked straight into each 
other's eyes. 

“Esther!" he said, — you should have 
heard his voice. 

“Dick!" said she. 

“My darling!" 

It was some time before they started for 
their walk; he kept an arm about her, and 
their sides were close together as they 

33 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

walked; the sun, the birds, the west wind 
running among the trees, a pressure, a look, 
the grasp tightening round a single finger, 
these things stood them in lieu of thought 
and filled their hearts with joy. The path 
they were following led them through a 
wood of pine-trees carpeted with heather 
and blueberry, and upon this pleasant 
carpet Dick, not without some seriousness, 
made her sit down. 

“ Esther!" he began, “ there is something 
you ought to know. You know my father is 
a rich man, and you would think, now that 
we love each other, we might marry when 
we pleased. But I fear, darling, we may have 
long to wait and shall want all our cour- 
age/’ 

“ I have courage for anything,” she said, 
“ I have all I want; with you and my father, 
I am so well off, and waiting is made so 
happy, that I could wait a lifetime and not 
weary.” 

He had a sharp pang at the mention of 
the Admiral. “Hear me out,” he continued. 
“I ought to have told you this before; but 
it is a thought I shrink from; if it were pos- 
34 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
sible, I should not tell you even now. My 
poor father and I are scarce on speaking 
terms/' 

“ Your father/' she repeated, turning pale. 

It must sound strange to you; but yet I 
cannot think I am to blame/' he said. " I 
will tell you how it happened." 

“O Dick!" she said, when she had heard 
him to an end, "How brave you are, and 
how proud! Yet I would not be proud with a 
father, I would tell him all." 

"What!" cried Dick, "go in months after, 
and brag that I had meant to thrash the 
man, and then didn't? And why? Because 
my father had made a bigger ass of himself 
than I supposed. My dear, that's non- 
sense." 

She winced at his words and drew away. 
" But then that is all he asks," she pleaded. 
" If he only knew that you had felt that im- 
pulse, it would make him so proud and 
happy. He would see you were his own son 
after all, and had the same thoughts and 
the same chivalry of spirit. And then you 
did yourself injustice when you spoke just 
now. It was because the editor was weak 


35 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

and poor and excused himself, that you re- 
pented your first determination. Had he 
been a big red man, with whiskers, you 
would have beaten him — you know you 
would — if Mr. Naseby had been ten times 
more committed. Do you think, if you can 
tell it to me, and I understand at once, that 
it would be more difficult to tell it to your 
own father, or that he would not be more 
ready to sympathise with you than I am? 
And I love you, Dick; but then he is your 
father.” 

“My dear,” said Dick desperately, “you 
do not understand; you do not know what 
it is to be treated with daily want of compre- 
hension and daily small injustices, through 
childhood and boyhood and manhood, until 
you despair of a hearing, until the thing 
rides you like a nightmare, until you al- 
most hate the sight of the man you love, 
and who’s your father after all. In short, 
Esther, you don’t know what it is to have 
a father, and that’s what blinds you.” 

“I see,” she said musingly, “you mean 
that I am fortunate in my father. But I am 
not so fortunate after all; you forget, I do 
36 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

not know him; it is you who know him; he 
is already more your father than mine.” 
And here she took his hand. Dick's heart 
had grown as cold as ice. “But I am sorry 
for you, too,” she continued, “it must be 
very sad and lonely.” 

“You misunderstand me,” said Dick 
chokingly. “My father is the best man I 
know in all this world ; he is worth a hundred 
of me, only he doesn't understand me, and 
he can't be made to.” 

There was a silence for a while. “Dick,” 
she began again, “I am going to ask a 
favour; it's the first time since you said you 
loved me. May I see your father — see him 
pass, I mean, where he will not observe 
me?” 

“Why?” asked Dick. 

“It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic 
about fathers.” 

The hint was enough for Dick; he con- 
sented with haste, and full of hang-dog 
penitence and disgust, took her down by a 
back way and planted her in the shrubbery, 
whence she might see the Squire ride by to 
dinner. There they both sat silent, but hold- 

37 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

ing hands, for nearly half an hour. At last 
the trotting of a horse sounded in the dis- 
tance, the park gates opened with a clang, 
and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with stoop- 
ing shoulders and a heavy, bilious counte- 
nance, languidly rising to the trot. Esther 
recognised him at once; she had often seen 
him before, though with her huge indiffer- 
ence for all that lay outside the circle of her 
love, she had never so much as wondered 
who he was; but now she recognised him, 
and found him ten years older, leaden and 
springless, and stamped by an abiding sor- 
row. 

“O Dick, Dick!” she said, and the tears 
began to shine upon her face as she hid it in 
his bosom; his own fell thickly, too. They 
had a sad walk home, and that night, full 
of love and good counsel, Dick exerted 
every art to please his father, to convince 
him of his respedt and affedtion, to heal up 
this breach of kindness, and reunite two 
hearts. But alas! the Squire was sick and 
peevish; he had been all day glooming over 
Dick’s estrangement — for so he put it to 
himself — and now with growls, cold words, 
38 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

and the cold shoulder, he beat off all ad- 
vances, and entrenched himself in a just 
resentment. 

V 

THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS 
DEBUT AT HOME 

That took place upon a Thursday. On 
the Thursday following, as Dick was walk- 
ing by appointment, earlier than usual, in 
the direction of the cottage, he was appalled 
to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury, 
containing the human form of Miss M'Gla- 
shan. The lady did not deign to remark him 
in her passage; her face was suffused with 
tears, and expressed much concern for the 
packages by which she was surrounded. He 
stood still, and asked himself what this cir- 
cumstance might portend. It was so beauti- 
ful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, 
yet something must perforce have happened 
at the cottage, and that of a decisive nature; 
for here was Miss M’Glashan on her travels, 
with a small patrimony in brown paper 
parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied 
hot battle and unqualified defeat. Was the 

39 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

house to be closed against him? Was Esther 
left alone, or had some new proteCtor made 
his appearance from among the millions of 
Europe? It is the character of love to loathe 
the near relatives of the loved one; chapters 
in the history of the human race have justi- 
fied this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, 
in particular, has frequently met with cen- 
sure from the independent novelist. Miss 
M’Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours 
of regret; whoever succeeded her, Dick felt 
the change would be for the worse. He hur- 
ried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew 
upon him with every step; as he entered the 
garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was 
once more arrested, not this time by doubt, 
but by an indubitable certainty of ill. 

The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral 
was here. 

Dick would have retreated, in the panic 
terror of the moment; but Esther kept a 
bright look-out when her lover was ex- 
pected. In a twinkling she was by his side, 
brimful of news, and pleasure too glad to 
notice his embarrassment, and in one of 
those golden transports of exultation which 


40 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
transcend not only words but caresses. She 
took him by the end of the fingers (reaching 
forward to take them, for her great preoccu- 
pation was to save time), she drew him 
towards her, pushed him past her in the 
door, and planted him face to face with 
Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of French country 
velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle 
on his nose. Then, as though this was the 
end of what she could endure in the way of 
joy, Esther turned and ran out of the 
room. 

The two men remained looking at each 
other with some confusion on both sides. 
Van Tromp was naturally the first to re- 
cover; he put out his hand with a fine ges- 
ture. 

“And you know my little lass, my 
Esther?” he said. “This is pleasant; this is 
what I have conceived of home. A strange 
word for the old rover; but we all have a 
taste for home and the homelike, disguise 
it how we may. It has brought me here, Mr. 
Naseby,” he concluded, with an intonation 
that would have made his fortune on the 
stage, so just, so sad, so dignified, so like a 

41 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
man of the world and a philosopher, “and 
you see a man who is content.” 

“I see,” said Dick. 

“Sit down,” continued the parasite, set- 
ting the example. “ Fortune has gone against 
me. (I am just sirrupping a little brandy — 
after my journey.) I was going down, Mr. 
Naseby; between you and me I was decave; 
1 borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise 
past the concierge — a work of considerable 
ta<5f — and here I am!” 

“Yes,” said Dick; “and here you are.” 
He was quite idiotic. 

Esther at this moment re-entered the 
room. 

“Are you glad to see him?” she whis- 
pered in his ear, the pleasure in her voice 
almost bursting through the whisper into 
song. 

“Oh, yes,” said Dick; “very!" 

“I knew you would be,” she replied; “I 
told him how you loved him.” 

“Help yourself,” said the Admiral, “help 
yourself; and let us drink to a new exist- 
ence.” 

“To a new existence,” repeated Dick; and 

42 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
he raised the tumbler to his lips, but set it 
down untasted. He had had enough of novel- 
ties for one day. 

Esther was sitting on a stool beside her 
father's feet, holding her knees in her arms, 
and looking with pride from one to the other 
of her two visitors. Her eyes were so bright 
that you were never sure if there were tears 
in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran 
about her body; sometimes she nestled her 
chin into her throat, sometimes threw back 
her head with ecstasy; in a word, she was in 
that state when it is said of people that they 
cannot contain themselves for happiness. 
It would be hard to exaggerate the agony 
of Richard. 

And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on 
interminably. 

“I never forget a friend,” said he, “nor 
yet an enemy: of the latter I never had but 
two — myself and the public; and I fancy 
I have had my vengeance pretty freely out 
of both." He chuckled. “ But those days are 
done. Van Tromp is no more. He was a man 
who had successes, — I believe you know 
I had successes, — to which we shall refer 


43 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

no further,” pulling down his neckcloth with 
a smile. "That man exists no more: by an 
exercise of will I have destroyed him. There 
is something like it in the poets. First, a 
brilliant and conspicuous career — the ob- 
served, I may say, of all observers, including 
the bum-baily: and then, presto! a quiet, 
sly, old, rustic bonhomme, cultivating roses. 
In Paris, Mr. Naseby ” 

"Call him Richard, father,” said Esther. 

"Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we 
are old friends, and now near neighbours; 
and, d propos, how are we off for neighbours, 
Richard? The cottage stands, I think, upon 
your father’s land, a family which I respedt 
— and the wood, I understand, is Lord 
Trevanion’s. Not that I care; I am an old 
Bohemian. I have cut society with a cut 
direct; I cut it when I was prosperous, and 
now I reap my reward, and can cut it with 
dignity in my declension. These are our little 
amours propres, my daughter; your father 
must respedt himself. Thank you, yes; just 
a leetle, leetle, tiny — thanks, thanks; you 
spoil me. But, as I was saying, Richard, or 
was about to say, my daughter has been 

44 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

allowed to rust ; her aunt was a mere duenna; 
hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust 
of me; my nature and that of the duenna are 
poles asunder — poles! But, now that I am 
here, now that I have given up the fight, 
and live henceforth for one only of my works 

— I have the modesty to say it is my best 

— my daughter — well, we shall put all 
that to rights. The neighbours, Richard? ,f 

Dick was understood to say that there 
were many good families in the Vale of 
Thyme. 

“You shall introduce us/’ said the Ad- 
miral. 

Dick’s shirt was wet; he made a lumber- 
ing excuse to go; which Esther explained 
to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so set 
down to the merit side of Dick’s account, 
while she proceeded to detain him. 

“Before our walk?” she cried. “Never! 
I must have my walk.” 

“Let us all go,” said the Admiral, rising. 
“You do not know that you are wanted,” 
she cried, leaning on his shoulder with a 
caress. “ I might wish to speak to my old 
friend about my new father. But you shall 

45 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
come to-day, you shall do all you want; I 
have set my heart on spoiling you/’ 

“ I will take just one drop more,” said the 
Admiral, stooping to help himself to brandy. 
“It is surprising how this journey has fa- 
tigued me. But I am growing old, I am grow- 
ing old, I am growing old, and — I regret 
to add — bald” 

He cocked a white wide-awake coquet- 
tishly upon his head — the habit of the lady- 
killer clung to him; and Esther had already 
thrown on her hat, and was ready, while he 
was still studying the result in a mirror: the 
carbuncle had somewhat painfully arrested 
his attention. 

“We are papa now; we must be respedt- 
able,” he said to Dick, in explanation of his 
dandyism: and then he went to a bundle 
and chose himself a staff. Where were the 
elegant canes of his Parisian epoch? This was 
a support for age, and designed for rustic 
scenes. Dick began to see and appreciate the 
man’s enjoyment in a new part, when he 
saw how carefully he had “made it up.” He 
had invented a gait for this first country 
stroll with his daughter, which was admir- 

46 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

ably in key. He walked with fatigue; he 
leaned upon the staff; he looked round him 
with a sad, smiling sympathy on all that he 
beheld; he even asked the name of a plant, 
and rallied himself gently for an old town- 
bird, ignorant of nature, “This country life 
will make me young again/' he sighed. They 
reached the top of the hill towards the first 
hour of evening; the sun was descending 
heaven, the colour had all drawn into the 
west; the hills were modelled in their least 
contour by the soft, slanting shine; and the 
wide moor lands, veined with glens and 
hazel woods, ran west and north in a hazy 
glory of light. Then the painter awakened 
in Van Tromp. 

“Gad, Dick," he cried, “what value!" 

An ode in four hundred lines would not 
have seemed so touching to Esther; her 
eyes filled with happy tears; yes, here was 
the father of whom she had dreamed, whom 
Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic, 
unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a 
fine gentleman in manner. 

And just then the Admiral perceived a 
house by the wayside, and something de- 

47 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

pending over the house door which might 
be construed as a sign by the hopeful and 
thirsty. 

“Is that/' he asked, pointing with his 
stick, “an inn?” 

There was a marked change in his voice, 
as though he attached some importance to 
the inquiry. Esther listened, hoping she 
should hear wit or wisdom. 

Dick said it was. 

“You know it?” inquired the Admiral. 

“I have passed it a hundred times, but 
that is all,” replied Dick. 

“Ah,” said Van Tromp, with a smile and 
shaking his head; “you are not an old cam- 
paigner; you have the world to learn. Now 
I, you see, find an inn so very near my own 
home, and my first thought is — my neigh- 
bours. 1 shall go forward and make my 
neighbour’s acquaintance; no, you needn’t 
come; I shall not be a moment.” 

And he walked off briskly towards the inn, 
leaving Dick alone with Esther on the road. 

“Dick,” she exclaimed, “I am so glad to 
get a word with you; I am so happy, I have 
such a thousand things to say; and I want 

48 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

you to do me a favour. Imagine, he has come 
without a paint-box, without' an easel; and 
I want him to have all. I want you to get 
them for me in Thymebury. You saw, this 
moment, how his heart turned to painting. 
They can’t live without it,” she added; 
meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michel- 
angelo. 

Up to that moment she had observed 
nothing amiss in Dick’s behaviour. She was 
too happy to be curious; and his silence, in 
presence of the great and good being whom 
she called her father, had seemed both 
natural and praiseworthy. But now that 
they were alone, she became conscious of a 
barrier between her lover and herself, and 
alarm sprang up in her heart 

“Dick,” she cried, “you don’t love me.” 

“ I do that,” he said heartily. 

“But you are unhappy; you are strange; 
you — you are not glad to see my father,” 
she concluded, with a break in her voice. 

“ Esther,” he said, “ I tell you that I love 
you; if you love me, you know what that 
means, and that all I wish is to see you 
happy. Do you think I cannot enjoy your 

49 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I 
am alarmed, if — Oh, believe me, try and 
believe in me,” he cried, giving up argu- 
ment with perhaps a happy inspiration. 

But the girl’s suspicions were aroused; 
and although she pressed the matter no 
further (indeed her father was already seen 
returning), it by no means left her thoughts. 
At one moment she simply resented the 
selfishness of a man who had obtruded his 
dark looks and passionate language on her 
joy; for there is nothing that a woman can 
less easily forgive than the language of a 
passion which, even if only for the moment, 
she does not share. At another, she sus- 
pected him of jealousy against her father; 
and for that, although she could see ex- 
cuses for it, she yet despised him. And at 
least, in one way or the other, here was the 
dangerous beginning of a separation be- 
tween two hearts. Esther found herself at 
variance with her sweetest friend; she could 
no longer look into his heart and find it 
written in the same language as her own; 
she could no longer think of him as the sun 
which radiated happiness upon her life, for 
5 ° 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
she had turned to him once, and he had 
breathed upon her black and chilly, radi- 
ated blackness and frost. To put the whole 
matter in a word, she was beginning, al- 
though ever so slightly, to fall out of love. 

VI 

THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON 
FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH 

We will not follow all the steps of the 
Admiral’s return and installation, but hurry 
forward towards the catastrophe, merely 
chronicling by the way a few salient inci- 
dents, wherein we must rely entirely upon 
the evidence of Richard, for Esther to this 
day has never opened her mouth upon this 
trying passage of her life, and as for the 
Admiral — well, that naval officer, though 
still alive, and now more suitably installed 
in a seaport town where he has a telescope 
and a flag in his front garden, is incapable 
of throwing the slightest gleam of light upon 
the affair. Often and often has he remarked 
to the present writer: “If I know what it 

was all about, sir, I’ll be ” in short, be 

Si 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
what I hope he will not. And then he will 
look across at his daughter’s portrait, a 
photograph, shake his head with an amused 
appearance, and mix himself another grog 
by way of consolation. Once I have heard 
him go further, and express his feelings with 
regard to Esther in a single but eloquent 
word. “A minx, sir,” he said, not in anger, 
rather in amusement; and he cordially drank 
her health upon the back of it. His worst 
enemy must admit him to be a man without 
malice; he never bore a grudge in his life, 
lacking the necessary taste and industry of 
attention. 

Yet it was during this obscure period that 
the drama was really performed; and its 
scene was in the heart of Esther, shut away 
from all eyes. Had this warm, upright, sullen 
girl been differently used by destiny, had 
events come upon her even in a different suc- 
cession, for some things lead easily to others, 
the whole course of this tale would have 
been changed, and Esther never would have 
run away. As it was, through a series of a£ts 
and words of which we know but few, and a 
series of thoughts which any one may imag- 
52 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

ine for himself, she was awakened in four 
days from the dream of a life. 

The first tangible cause of disenchant- 
ment was when Dick brought home a 
painter's arsenal on Friday evening. The 
Admiral was in the chimney-corner, once 
more “sin-upping” some brandy-and-water, 
and Esther sat at the table at work. They 
both came forward to greet the new arrival; 
and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous 
burthen, proceeded to display her offerings 
to her father. Van Tromp’s countenance fell 
several degrees; he became quite querulous. 

“God bless me,” he said; and then, “1 
must really ask you not to interfere, child,” 
in a tone of undisguised hostility. 

“Father,” she said, “forgive me; I knew 
you had given up your art ” 

“Oh, yes,” cried the Admiral; “I've done 
with it to the judgment day!” 

“Pardon me again,” she said firmly, “but 
I do not, I cannot think that you are right in 
this. Suppose the world is unjust, suppose 
that no one understands you, you have still 
a duty to yourself. And oh, don’t spoil the 
pleasure of your coming home to me; show 

53 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

me that you can be my father and yet not 
negleft your destiny. I am not like some 
daughters; I will not be jealous of your art, 
and I will try to understand it.” 

The situation was odiously farcical. Rich- 
ard groaned under it ; he longed to leap for- 
ward and denounce the humbug. And the 
humbug himself? Do you fancy he was 
easier in his mind? I am sure, on the other 
hand, that he was actually miserable; and 
he betrayed his sufferings by a perfe£tly 
silly and undignified access of temper, dur- 
ing which he broke his pipe in several places, 
threw his brandy-and-water in the fire, and 
employed words which were very plain al- 
though the drift of them was somewhat 
vague. It was of very brief duration. Van 
Tromp was himself again, and in a most 
delightful humour within three minutes of 
the first explosion. 

“I am an old fool/' he said frankly. “I 
was spoiled when a child. As for you, Esther, 
you take after your mother; you have a 
morbid sense of duty, particularly for others; 
strive against it, my dear — strive against 
it. And as for the pigments, well, Til use 

54 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
them some of these days; and to show that 
I'm in earnest, I’ll get Dick here to prepare 
a canvas.” 

Dick was put to this menial task forth- 
with, the Admiral not even watching how 
he did, but quite occupied with another 
grog and a pleasant vein of talk. 

A little after Esther arose, and making 
some pretext, good or bad, went off to bed. 
Dick was left hobbled by the canvas, and 
was subjected to Van Tromp for about an 
hour. 

The next day, Saturday, it is believed 
that little intercourse took place between 
Esther and her father; but towards the 
afternoon Dick met the latter returning 
from the direction of the inn, where he had 
struck up quite a friendship with the land- 
lord. Dick wondered who paid for these ex- 
cursions, and at the thought that the repro- 
bate must get his pocket-money where he 
got his board and lodging, from poor Esther's 
generosity, he had it almost in his heart to 
knock the old gentleman down. He, on his 
part, was full of airs and graces and genial- 
ity. 


55 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Dear Dick,” he said, taking his arm, 
“this is neighbourly of you; it shows your 
ta£f to meet me when I had a wish for you. 
I am in pleasant spirits; and it is then that 
I desire a friend.” 

“ I am glad to hear that you are so happy,” 
retorted Dick bitterly. “There's certainly 
not much to trouble you.” 

“No,” assented the Admiral, “not much. 
I got out of it in time; and here — well, here 
everything pleases me. I am plain in my 
tastes. A propos, you have never asked me 
how I liked my daughter.” 

“No,” said Dick roundly; “I certainly 
have not.” 

“Meaning you will not. And why, Dick? 
She is my daughter, of course; but then I am 
a man of the world and a man of taste, and 
perfectly qualified to give an opinion with 
impartiality — yes, Dick, with impartiality. 
Frankly, I am not disappointed in her. She 
has good looks; she has them from her 
mother. She is devoted, quite devoted to 
me 

“She is the best woman in the world!” 
broke out Dick. 

5 6 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Dick/" cried the Admiral, stopping 
short; “I have been expecting this. Let us 
— let us go back to the Trevanion Arms, 
and talk this matter out over a bottle/' 

“Certainly not,” said Dick. “You have 
had far too much already.” 

The parasite was on the point of resenting 
this; but a look at Dick's face, and some 
recollections of the terms on which they had 
stood in Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom 
and restrained him. 

“As you please,” he said; “although I 
don't know what you mean — nor care. But 
let us walk, if you prefer it. You are still a 
young man; when you are my age — But, 
however, to continue. You please me, Dick; 
you have pleased me from the first; and to 
say truth, Esther is a trifle fantastic, and 
will be better when she is married. She has 
means of her own, as of course you are 
aware. They come, like the looks, from her 
poor, dear, good creature of a mother. She 
was blessed in her mother. 1 mean she shall 
be blessed in her husband, and you are the 
man, Dick, you and not another. This very 
night I will sound her affeCtions.” 


57 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

Dick stood aghast. 

‘‘Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you/ 1 he said; 
“do what you please with yourself, but for 
God’s sake let your daughter alone.” 

“It is my duty,” replied the Admiral, 
“and between ourselves, you rogue, my in- 
clination too. I am as matchmaking as a 
dowager. It will be more discreet for you to 
stay away to-night. Farewell. You leave 
your case in good hands; I have the ta<5f of 
these little matters by heart; it is not my 
first attempt.” 

All arguments were in vain; the old rascal 
stuck to his point; nor did Richard conceal 
from himself how seriously this might in- 
jure his prospers, and he fought hard. Once 
there came a glimmer of hope. The Admiral 
again proposed an adjournment to the 
“Trevanion Arms,” and when Dick had 
once more refused, it hung for a moment in 
the balance whether or not the old toper 
would return there by himself. Had he done 
so, of course Dick could have taken to his 
heels, and warned Esther of what was com- 
ing, and of how it had begun. But the Ad- 
miral, after a pause, decided for the brandy 
58 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

at home, and made off in that direc- 
tion. 

We have no details of the sounding. 

Next day the Admiral was observed in 
the parish church, very properly dressed. 
He found the places, and joined in response 
and hymn, as to the manner born; and his 
appearance, as he intended it should, at- 
tracted some attention among the worship- 
pers. Old Naseby, for instance, had ob- 
served him. 

“There was a drunken-looking black- 
guard opposite us in church,” he said to his 
son as they drove home; “do you know who 
he was?” 

“Some fellow — Van Tromp, I believe,” 
said Dick. 

“A foreigner too!” observed the Squire. 

Dick could not sufficiently congratulate 
himself on the escape he had effected. Had 
the Admiral met him with his father, what 
would have been the result? And could such 
a catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed 
to him as if the storm were nearly ripe; and 
it was so more nearly than he thought. 

He did not go to the cottage in the after- 

59 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

noon, withheld by fear and shame; but when 
dinner was over at Naseby House, and the 
Squire had gone off into a comfortable doze, 
Dick slipped out of the room, and ran across 
country, in part to save time, in part to 
save his own courage from growing cold; 
for he now hated the notion of the cottage 
or the Admiral, and if he did not hate, at 
least feared to think of Esther. He had no 
clue to her reflexions; but he could not con- 
ceal from his own heart that he must have 
sunk in her esteem, and the speXacle of her 
infatuation galled him like an insult. 

He knocked and was admitted. The room 
looked very much as on his last visit, with 
Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside 
the fire; but the expression of the two faces 
told a very different story. The girl was 
paler than usual; her eyes were dark, the 
colour seemed to have faded from round 
them, and her swiftest glance was as intent 
as a stare. The appearance of the Admiral, 
on the other hand, was rosy, and flabby, 
and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt 
collar, his smile was loose and wandering, 
and he had so far relaxed the natural con- 

60 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

trol of his eyes, that one of them was aimed 
inward, as if to catch the growth of the car- 
buncle. We are warned against bad judg- 
ments; but the Admiral was certainly not 
sober. He made no attempt to rise when 
Richard entered, but waved his pipe flightily 
in the air, and gave a leer of welcome. 
Esther took as little notice of him as might 
be. 

“Aha! Dick!” cried the painter. “Fve 
been to church; I have, upon my word. 
And I saw you there, though you didn't see 
me. And I saw a devilish pretty woman, by 
Gad. If it were not for this baldness, and a 
kind of crapulous air I can't disguise from 
myself — if it weren't for this and that and 
t'other thing — I — I've forgot what I was 
saying. Not that that matters, I've heaps of 
things to say. I’m in a communicative vein 
to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even unto 
seventy times seven. I'm in what I call the 
stage, and all I desire is a listener, although 
he were deaf, to be as happy as Nebuchad- 
nezzar.” 

Of the two hours which followed upon 
this it is unnecessary to give more than a 

61 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly, 
now and then amusing, and never really 
offensive. It was plain that he kept in view 
the presence of his daughter, and chose sub- 
jects and a character of language that should 
not offend a lady. On almost any other occa- 
sion Dick would have enjoyed the scene. 
Van Tromp’s egotism, flown with drink, 
struck a pitch above mere vanity. He be- 
came candid and explanatory; sought to 
take his auditors entirely into his confidence, 
and tell them his inmost conviction about 
himself. Between his self-knowledge, which 
was considerable, and his vanity, which 
was immense, he had created a strange 
hybrid animal, and called it by his own 
name. How he would plume his feathers 
over virtues which would have gladdened 
the heart of Caesar or St. Paul; and, anon, 
complete his own portrait with one of those 
touches of pitiless realism which the satirist 
so often seeks in vain. 

"Now, there's Dick,” he said, "he's 
shrewd; he saw through me the first time 
we met, and told me so — told me so to my 
face, which I had the virtue to keep. I bear 

62 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

you no malice for it, Dick; you were right; 
I am a humbug.” 

You may fancy how Esther quailed at 
this new feature of the meeting between 
her two idols. 

And then, again, in a parenthesis: 

“That,” said Van Tromp, “was when I 
had to paint those dirty daubs of mine.” 

And a little further on, laughingly said, 
perhaps, but yet with an air of truth: 

“I never had the slightest hesitation in 
sponging upon any human creature.” 

Thereupon Dick got up. 

“I think, perhaps,” he said, “we had 
better all be thinking of going to bed.” And 
he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory 
smile. 

“Not at all,” cried the Admiral, “I know 
a trick worth two of that. Puss here,” in- 
dicating his daughter, “shall go to bed; and 
you and I will keep it up till all's blue.” 

Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. 
She had sat and listened for two mortal 
hours while her idol defiled himself and 
sneered away his godhead. One by one, her 
illusions had departed; and now he wished 

63 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

to order her to bed in her own house! now 
he called her Puss! now, even as he uttered 
the words, toppling on his chair, he broke 
the stem of his tobacco pipe in three! Never 
did the sheep turn upon her shearer with a 
more commanding front. Her voice was 
calm, her enunciation a little slow, but per- 
fectly distinCt, and she stood before him, as 
she spoke, in the simplest and most maidenly 
attitude. 

“No,” she said, “Mr. Naseby will have 
the goodness to go home at once, and you 
will go to bed.” 

The broken fragments of pipe fell from 
the Admiral’s fingers; he seemed by his 
countenance to have lived too long in a 
world unworthy of him ; but it is an odd cir- 
cumstance, he attempted no reply, and sat 
thunderstruck, with open mouth. 

Dick she motioned sharply towards the 
door, and he could only obey her. In the 
porch, finding she was close behind him, he 
ventured to pause and whisper, “You have 
done right.” 

“I have done as I pleased,” she said. 
“Can he paint?” 

64 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Many people like his paintings/' re- 
turned Dick, in stifled tones; “I never did; 
I never said I did,” he added, fiercely de- 
fending himself before he was attacked. 

“ I ask you if he can paint. I will not be 
put off. Can he paint?” she repeated. 

“No,” said Dick. 

“Does he even like it?” 

“Not now, I believe.” 

“And he is drunk?” — she leaned upon 
the word with hatred. 

“ He has been drinking.” 

“Go,” she said, and was turning to re- 
enter the house when another thought 
arrested her. “Meet me to-morrow morning 
at the stile,” she said. 

“I will,” replied Dick. 

And then the door closed behind her, and 
Dick was alone in the darkness. There was 
still a chink of light above the sill, a warm, 
mild glow behind the window; the roof of 
the cottage and some of the banks and 
hazels were defined in denser darkness 
against the sky; but all else was formless, 
breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick 
remained as she had left him, standing 

6 5 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

squarely on one foot and resting only on the 
toe of the other, and as he stood he listened 
with his soul. The sound of a chair pushed 
sharply over the floor startled his heart into 
his mouth; but the silence which had thus 
been disturbed settled back again at once 
upon the cottage and its vicinity. What 
took place during this interval is a secret 
from the world of men; but when it was 
over the voice of Esther spoke evenly and 
without interruption for perhaps half a 
minute, and as soon as that ceased heavy 
and uncertain footfalls crossed the parlour 
and mounted lurching up the stairs. The 
girl had tamed her father, Van Tromp had 
gone obediently to bed; so much was ob- 
vious to the watcher in the road. And yet 
he still waited, straining his ears, and with 
terror and sickness at his heart ; for if Esther 
had followed her father, if she had even 
made one movement in this great conspiracy 
of men and nature to be still, Dick must 
have had instant knowledge of it from his 
station before the door; and if she had not 
moved, must she not have fainted? or might 
she not be dead? 


66 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

He could hear the cottage clock delib- 
erately measure out the seconds; time stood 
still with him; an almost superstitious terror 
took command of his faculties; at last, he 
could bear no more, and springing through 
the little garden in two bounds, he put his 
face against the window. The blind, which 
had not been drawn fully down, left an open 
chink about an inch in height along the 
bottom of the glass, and the whole parlour 
was thus exposed to Dick's investigation. 
Esther sat upright at the table, her head 
resting on her hand, her eyes fixed upon the 
candle. Her brows were slightly bent, her 
mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so 
still and settled that Dick could hardly fancy 
that she breathed. She had not stirred at the 
sound of Dick’s arrival. Soon after, making 
a considerable disturbance amid the vast 
silence of the night, the clock lifted up its 
voice, whined for a while like a partridge, 
and then eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. 
Still Esther continued immovable and gazed 
upon the candle. Midnight followed, and 
then one of the morning; and still she had 
not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared 

67 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
to quit the window. And then about half 
past one, the candle she had been thus in- 
tently watching flared up into a last blaze 
of paper, and she leaped to her feet with an 
ejaculation, looked about her once, blew 
out the light, turned round, and was heard 
rapidly mounting the staircase in the dark. 

Dick was left once more alone to darkness 
and to that dulled and dogged state of mind 
when a man thinks that misery must now 
have done her worst, and is almost glad to 
think so. He turned and walked slowly 
towards the stile; she had told him no hour, 
and he was determined, whenever she came, 
that she should find him waiting. As he got 
there the day began to dawn, and he leaned 
over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee 
away. Up went the sun at last out of a bank 
of clouds that were already disbanding in 
the east; a herald wind had already sprung 
up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the 
congregated dewdrops. “Alas!” thought 
Dick Naseby, “how can any other day come 
so distastefully to me?” He still wanted his 
experience of the morrow. 


68 


THE STORY OF A LIE 


VII 

THE ELOPEMENT 

It was probably on the stroke of ten, and 
Dick had been half asleep for some time 
against the bank, when Esther came up the 
road carrying a bundle. Some kind of in- 
stinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, 
recalled him, while she was still a good way 
off, to the possession of his faculties, and he 
half raised himself and blinked upon the 
world. It took him some time to re-collect 
his thoughts. He had awakened with a cer- 
tain blank and childish sense of pleasure; 
but this feeling gradually died away, and 
was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded 
by a conviction of the truth. The whole story 
of the past night sprang into his mind with 
every detail, as by an exercise of the direct 
and speedy sense of sight, and he arose from 
the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to 
meet his love. 

She came up to him steady and fast, her 
face still pale, but to all appearance per- 
fectly composed; and she showed neither sur- 

69 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

prise, relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover 
on the spot. Nor did she offer him her hand. 

“ Here I am,” said he. 

“Yes,” she replied; and then, without a 
pause or any change of voice, “ I want you 
to take me away,” she added. 

“Away?” he repeated. “How? Where?” 

“To-day,” she said. “ I do not care where 
it is, but I want you to take me away.” 

“For how long? I do not understand,” 
gasped Dick. 

“ I shall never come back here any more,” 
was all she answered. 

Wild words uttered, as these were, with 
perfect quiet of manner, exercise a double 
influence on the hearer's mind. Dick was 
confounded; he recovered from astonish- 
ment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He 
looked upon her frozen attitude, so discourag- 
ing for a lover to behold, and recoiled from 
the thoughts which it suggested. 

“To me?” he asked. “Are you coming to 
me, Esther?” 

“I want you to take me away,” she re- 
peated, with weary impatience. “Take me 
away — take me away from here.” 

7 ° 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

The situation was not sufficiently defined. 
Dick asked himself with concern whether 
she were altogether in her right wits. To take 
her away, to marry her, to work off his hands 
for her support, Dick was content to do all 
this; yet he required some show of love on 
her part. He was not one of those tough- 
hided and small-hearted males who would 
marry their love at the point of the bayonet 
rather than not marry her at all. He desired 
that a woman should come to his arms with 
an attractive willingness, if not with ardour. 
And Esther's bearing was more that of de- 
spair than that of love. It chilled him and 
taught him wisdom. 

‘‘Dearest," he urged, “tell me what you 
wish, and you shall have it; tell me your 
thoughts, and then I can advise you. But 
to go from here without a plan, without 
forethought, in the heat of the moment, is 
madder than madness, and can help nothing. 
1 am not speaking like a man, but I speak 
the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's 
absurd, and wrong, and hurtful." 

She looked at him with a lowering, languid 
look of wrath. 

7 1 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“So you will not take me?” she said. 
“Well, I will go alone.” 

And she began to step forward on her way. 
But he threw himself before her. 

“Esther, Esther!” he cried. 

“ Let me go — don't touch me — what 
right have you to interfere? Who are you, 
to touch me?” she flashed out, shrill with 
anger. 

Then being made bold by her violence, he 
took her firmly, almost roughly, by the arm, 
and held her while he spoke. 

“You know well who I am, and what I 
am, and that I love you. You say I will not 
help you; but your heart knows the con- 
trary. It is you who will not help me; for you 
will not tell me what you want. You see — 
or you could see, if you took the pains to 
look — how I have waited here all night to 
be ready at your service. I only asked in- 
formation; I only urged you to consider; 
and I still urge you to think better of your 
fancies. But if your mind is made up, so be 
it; I will beg no longer; I will give you my 
order; and I will not allow — not allow you 
to go hence alone.” 

72 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

She looked at him for a while with cold, 
unkind scrutiny, like one who tries the 
temper of a tool. 

“Well, take me away then,” she said, with 
a sigh. 

“Good,” said Dick. “Come with me to 
the stables; there we shall get the pony-trap 
and drive to the jun£tion. To-night you shall 
be in London. I am yours so wholly that no 
words can make me more so; and, besides, 
you know it, and the words are needless. 
May God help me to be good to you, Esther 
— may God help me ! for I see that you will 
not.” 

So, without more speech, they set out to- 
gether, and were already got some distance 
from the spot, ere he observed that she was 
still carrying the hand-bag. She gave it up 
to him, passively, but when he offered her 
his arm, merely shook her head and pursed 
up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleas- 
antly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon 
their faces, and smelt racily of woods and 
meadows. As they went down into the Valley 
of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose 
into the air like a perennial laughter. On the 

73 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

far-away hills, sunburst and shadow raced 
along the slopes and leaped from peak to 
peak. Earth, air, and water, each seemed in 
better health and had more of the shrewd 
salt of life in them than upon ordinary morn- 
ings; and from east to west, from the lowest 
glen to the height of heaven, from every 
look and touch and scent, a human creature 
could gather the most encouraging intelli- 
gence as to the durability and spirit of the 
universe. 

Through all this walked Esther, picking 
her small steps like a bird, but silent and 
with a cloud under her thick eyebrows. She 
seemed insensible, not only of nature, but 
of the presence of her companion. She was 
altogether engrossed in herself, and looked 
neither to right nor to left, but straight be- 
fore her on the road. When they came to the 
bridge, however, she halted, leaned on the 
parapet, and stared for a moment at the 
clear, brown pool, and swift, transient snow- 
drift of the rapids. 

“I am going to drink,” she said; and de- 
scended the winding footpath to the margin. 

There she drank greedily in her hands, 

74 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

and washed her temples with water. The 
coolness seemed to break, for an instant, the 
spell that lay upon her; for, instead of hasten- 
ing forward again in her dull, indefatigable 
tramp, she stood still where she was, for 
near a minute, looking straight before her. 
And Dick, from above on the bridge where 
he stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivo- 
cal smile dawn slowly on her face and pass 
away again at once and suddenly, leaving 
her as grave as ever; and the sense of dis- 
tance, which it is so cruel for a lover to 
endure, pressed with every moment more 
heavily on her companion. Her thoughts 
were all secret; her heart was locked and 
bolted; and he stood without, vainly wooing 
her with his eyes. 

“Do you feel better?” asked Dick, as she 
at last rejoined him; and after the con- 
straint of so long a silence, his voice sounded 
foreign to his own ears. 

She looked at him for an appreciable frac- 
tion of a minute ere she answered, and when 
she did, it was in the monosyllable — “Yes.” 

Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. 
His words died away on his tongue. Even 

75 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

his eyes, despairing of encouragement, 
ceased to attend on hers. And they went on 
in silence through Kirton hamlet, where an 
old man followed them with his eyes, and 
perhaps envied them their youth and love; 
and across the ivy beck where the mill was 
splashing and grumbling low thunder to 
itself in the chequered shadow of the dell, 
and the miller before the door was beating 
flour from his hands as he whistled a modu- 
lation; and up by the high spinney, whence 
they saw the mountains upon either hand; 
and down the hill again to the back courts 
and offices of Naseby House. Esther had 
kept ahead all the way, and Dick plodded 
obediently in her wake; but as they neared 
the stables, he pushed on and took the lead. 
He would have preferred her to await him 
in the road while he went on and brought 
the carriage back, but after so many re- 
pulses and rebuffs he lacked courage to offer 
the suggestion. Perhaps, too, he felt it wiser 
to keep his convoy within sight. So they en- 
tered the yard in Indian file, like a tramp 
and his wife. 

The groom's eyebrows rose as he received 

76 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
the order for the pony-phaeton, and kept 
rising during all his preparations. Esther 
stood bolt upright and looked steadily at 
some chickens in the corner of the yard. 
Master Richard himself, thought the groom, 
was not in his ordinary; for in truth, he car- 
ried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either 
stood listless, or set off suddenly walking in 
one direction after another with brisk, de- 
cisive footsteps. Moreover, he had appar- 
ently negledted to wash his hands, and 
bore the air of one returning from a pro- 
longed nutting ramble. Upon the groom's 
countenance there began to grow up an ex- 
pression as of one about to whistle. And 
hardly had the carriage turned the corner 
and rattled into the high road with this in- 
explicable pair, than the whistle broke forth 
— prolonged, and low and tremulous; and 
the groom, already so far relieved, vented 
the rest of his surprise in one simple Eng- 
lish word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar 
and the sooty pitman, and hurried to spread 
the news round the servants' hall of Naseby 
House. Luncheon would be on the table in 
little beyond an hour; and the Squire, on 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

sitting down, would hardly fail to ask for 
Master Richard. Hence, as the intelligent 
reader can foresee, this groom has a part to 
play in the imbroglio. 

Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply 
and bitterly. It seemed to him as if his love 
had gone from him indeed, yet gone but a 
little way; as if he needed but to find the 
right touch or intonation, and her heart 
would recognise him and be melted. Yet he 
durst not open his mouth, and drove in 
silence till they had passed the main park- 
gates and turned into the cross-cut lane 
along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it 
must be now, or never. 

“ Can't you see you are killing me?” he 
cried. “ Speak to me, look at me, treat me 
like a human man.” 

She turned slowly and looked him in the 
face with eyes that seemed kinder. He 
dropped the reins and caught her hand, 
and she made no resistance although her 
touch was unresponsive. But when, throw- 
ing one arm round her waist, he sought to 
kiss her lips, not like a lover indeed, not be- 
cause he wanted to do so, but as a desperate 
78 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

man who puts his fortunes to the touch, she 
drew away from him, with a knot in her 
forehead, backed and shied about fiercely 
with her head, and pushed him from her 
with her hand. Then there was no room left 
for doubt, and Dick saw, as clear as sun- 
light, that she had a distaste or nourished 
a grudge against him. 

“Then you don't love me?" he said, draw- 
ing back from her, he also, as though her 
touch had burnt him; and then, as she made 
no answer, he repeated with another in- 
tonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, 
“You don’t love me, do you, do you?" 

“I don’t know," she replied. “Why do 
you ask me? Oh, how should I know? It has 
all been lies together — lies, and lies, and 
lies!" 

He cried her name sharply, like a man 
who has taken a physical hurt, and that was 
the last word that either of them spoke until 
they reached Thymebury Junction. 

This was a station isolated in the midst 
of moorlands, yet living on the great up- 
line to London. The nearest town, Thyme- 
bury itself, was seven miles distant along 

79 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

the branch they call the Vale of Thyme 
Railway. It was now nearly half an hour 
past noon, the down train had just gone by, 
and there would be no more traffic at the 
jundtion until half-past three, when the 
local train comes in to meet the up express 
at a quarter before four. The stationmaster 
had already gone off to his garden, which 
was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; 
a porter, who was just leaving, took charge 
of the phaeton, and promised to return it 
before night to Naseby House; only a deaf, 
snuffy and stern old man remained to play 
propriety for Dick and Esther. 

Before the phaeton had driven off, the 
girl had entered the station and seated her- 
self upon a bench. The endless, empty moor- 
lands stretched before her, entirely unen- 
closed, and with no boundary but the hori- 
zon. Two lines of rails, a wagon shed, and a 
few telegraph posts alone diversified the 
outlook. As for sounds, the silence was un- 
broken save by the chant of the telegraph 
wires and the crying of the plovers on the 
waste. With the approach of midday the 
wind had more and more fallen, it was novf 

80 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

sweltering hot, and the air trembled in the 
sunshine. 

Dick paused for an instant on the threshold 
of the platform. Then, in two steps, he was 
by her side and speaking almost with a sob. 

“Esther,” he said, “have pity on me. 
What have I done? Can you not forgive me? 
Esther, you loved me once — can you not 
love me still?” 

“How can I tell you? How am I to know?” 
she answered. “ You are all a lie to me — all 
a lie from first to last. You were laughing 
at my folly, playing with me like a child, at 
the very time when you declared you loved 
me. Which was true? was any of it true? or 
was it all, all a mockery? I am weary trying 
to find out. And you say I loved you ; I loved 
my father's friend. I never loved, I never 
heard of, you, until that man came home 
and I began to find myself deceived. Give 
me back my father, be what you were be- 
fore, and you may talk of love indeed.” 

“Then you cannot forgive me — cannot?” 
he asked. 

“ 1 have nothing to forgive,” she answered. 
“ You do not understand.” 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Is that your last word, Esther?” said 
he, very white and biting his lip to keep it 
still. 

“ Yes; that is my last word,” replied she. 

“Then we are here on false pretences, 
and we stay here no longer,” he said. “Had 
you still loved me, right or wrong, I should 
have taken you away, because then I could 
have made you happy. But as it is — I must 
speak plainly — what you proposed is de- 
grading to you and an insult to me, and a 
rank unkindness to your father. Your father 
may be this or that, but you should use him 
like a fellow-creature.” 

“What do you mean?” she flashed. “I 
leave him my house and all my money; it is 
more than he deserves. I wonder you dare 
speak to me about that man. And besides, 
it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let 
me never hear from him again.” 

“ I thought you romantic about fathers,” 
he said. 

“Is that a taunt?” she demanded. 

“No,” he replied, “it is an argument. No 
one can make you like him, but don’t dis- 
grace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, 

82 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

old and broken down. Even I am sorry for 
him, and he has been the loss of all I cared 
for. Write to your aunt; when I see her 
answer you can leave quietly and naturally, 
and I will take you to your aunt’s door. But 
in the meantime you must go home. You 
have no money, and so you are helpless, and 
must do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, 
I do all for your good, and your good only, 
so God help me.” 

She had put her hand into her pocket and 
withdrawn it empty. 

“ 1 counted upon you,” she wailed, 

“ You counted rightly, then,” he retorted. 
“I will not, to please you for a moment, 
make both of us unhappy for our lives; and 
since I cannot marry you, we have only 
been too long away and must go home at 
once.” 

“Dick,” she cried suddenly, “perhaps 1 
might — perhaps in time — perhaps ” 

“There is no perhaps about the matter,” 
interrupted Dick. “ I must go and bring the 
phaeton.” 

And with that he strode from the station, 
all in a glow of passion and virtue. Esther, 

83 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks 
flushed during these last words, relapsed in 
a second into a state of petrifaction. She re- 
mained without motion during his absence, 
and when he returned suffered herself to be 
put back into the phaeton, and driven off 
on the return journey like an idiot or a tired 
child. Compared with what she was now, 
her condition of the morning seemed posi- 
tively natural. She sat cold and white and 
silent, and there was no speculation in her 
eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the 
pony, and once tried to whistle, but his 
courage was going down; huge clouds of de- 
spair gathered together in his soul, and from 
time to time their darkness was divided by a 
piercing flash of longing and regret. He had 
lost his love — he had lost his love for good. 

The pony was tired, and the hills very 
long and steep, and the air sultrier than ever, 
for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It 
seemed as if this miserable drive would never 
be done, as if poor Dick would never be able 
to go away and be comfortably wretched by 
himself; for all his desire was to escape from 
her presence and the reproach of her averted 
84 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

looks. He had lost his love, he thought — he 
had lost his love for good. 

They were already not far from the cot- 
tage, when his heart again faltered and he 
appealed to her once more, speaking low and 
eagerly in broken phrases. 

“I cannot live without your love/' he 
concluded. 

“I do not understand what you mean,” 
she replied, and I believe with perfect truth. 

“Then,” said he, wounded to the quick, 
“your aunt might come and fetch you 
herself. Of course you can command me 
as you please, but I think it would be bet- 
ter so.” 

“Oh yes,” she said wearily, “better so.” 

This was the only exchange of words be- 
tween them till about four o'clock; the 
phaeton, mounting the lane, “opened out” 
the cottage between the leafy banks. Thin 
smoke went straight up from the chimney; 
the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in 
the lane, hung down their heads in the heat; 
the stillness was broken only by the sound 
of hoofs. For right before the gate a livery 
servant rode slowly up and down, leading a 

85 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered 
to identify his father’s chestnut. 

Alas! poor Richard, what should this por- 
tend? 

The servant, as in duty bound, dis- 
mounted and took the phaeton into his 
keeping, yet Dick thought he touched his 
hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, 
passive as ever, was helped out and crossed 
the garden with a slow and mechanical gait, 
and Dick following close behind her, heard 
from within the cottage his father’s voice 
upraised in anathema, and the shriller tones 
of the Admiral responding in the key of war. 

VIII 

BATTLE ROYAL 

Squire Naseby, on sitting down to lunch, 
had inquired for Dick, whom he had not 
seen since the day before at dinner; and the 
servant answering awkwardly that Master 
Richard had come back, but had gone out 
again with the pony-phaeton, his suspicions 
became aroused, and he cross-questioned 
the man until the whole was out. It ap- 
86 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

peared from this report that Dick had been 
going about for nearly a month with a girl 
in the Vale — a Miss Van Tromp; that she 
lived near Lord Trevanion's upper wood; 
that recently Miss Van Tromp’s papa had 
returned home from foreign parts after a 
prolonged absence; that this papa was an 
old gentleman, very chatty and free with 
his money in the public-house — where- 
upon Mr. Naseby's face became encrimsoned ; 
that the papa, furthermore, was said to be 
an admiral — whereupon Mr. Naseby spat 
out a whistle brief and fierce as an oath; 
that Master Dick seemed very friendly with 
the papa — “God help him!” said Mr. 
Naseby; that last night Master Dick had not 
come in, and to-day he had driven away in 
the phaeton with the young lady. 

“Young woman,” corre£ted Mr. Naseby. 

“Yes, sir,” said the man, who had been 
unwilling enough to gossip from the first, 
and was now cowed by the effeft of his 
communications on the master. “Young 
woman, sir!” 

“Had they luggage?” demanded the 
Squire. 


87 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“Yes, sir.” 

Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, 
struggling to keep down his emotion, and 
he mastered it so far as to mount into the 
sarcastic vein, when he was in the nearest 
danger of melting into the sorrowful. 

“And was this — this Van Dunk with 
them?” he asked, dwelling scornfully on the 
name. 

The servant believed not, and being eager 
to shift the responsibility to other shoulders, 
suggested that perhaps the master had bet- 
ter inquire further from George the stable- 
man in person. 

“Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come 
with me. He can take the grey gelding; for 
we may ride fast. And then you can take 
away this trash,” added Mr. Naseby, point- 
ing to the luncheon; and he arose, lordly in 
his anger, and marched forth upon the ter- 
race to await his horse. 

There Dick’s old nurse shrunk up to him, 
for the news went like wildfire over Naseby 
House, and timidly expressed a hope that 
there was nothing much amiss with the 
young master. 

88 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

"I'll pull him through/' the Squire said 
grimly, as though he meant to pull him 
through a threshing mill; ‘Til save him 
from this gang; God help him with the next ! 
He has a taste for low company, and no 
natural affedtions to steady him. His father 
was no society for him; he must go fuddling 
with a Dutchman, Nance, and now he's 
caught. Let us pray he’ll take the lesson," 
he added, more gravely, “but youth is here 
to make troubles, and age to pull them out 
again." 

Nance whimpered and recalled several 
episodes of Dick's childhood, which moved 
Mr. Naseby to blow his nose and shake her 
hard by the hand; and then, the horse hav- 
ing arrived opportunely, to get himself with- 
out delay into the saddle and canter off. 

He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, 
where, as was to be expedted, he could glean 
no tidings of the runaways. They had not 
been seen at the George; they had not been 
seen at the station. The shadow darkened 
on Mr. Naseby’s face; the jundfion did not 
occur to him; his last hope was for Van 
Tromp's cottage; thither he bade George 

89 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

guide him, and thither he followed, nursing 
grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart. 

“Here it is, sir ,” said George, stopping. 

“What! on my own land!” he cried. 
“How’s this? I let this place to somebody 
— M’Whirter or M’Glashan.” 

“Miss M’Glashan was the young lady’s 
aunt, sir, I believe,” returned George. 

“Ay — dummies,” said the Squire. “I 
shall whistle for my rent too. Here, take my 
horse.” 

The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was 
sitting by the window with a long glass. He 
already knew the Squire by sight, and now, 
seeing him dismount before the cottage and 
come striding through the garden, concluded 
without doubt he was there to ask for 
Esther’s hand. 

“This is why the girl is not yet home,” he 
thought; “a very suitable delicacy on young 
Naseby’s part.” 

And he composed himself with some 
pomp, answered the loud rattle of the riding 
whip upon the door with a dulcet invitation 
to enter, and coming forward with a bow 
and a smile, “Mr. Naseby, I believe,” said he. 

90 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

The Squire came armed for battle; took in 
his man from top to toe in one rapid and 
scornful glance, and decided on a course at 
once. He must let the fellow see that he 
understood him. 

“You are Mr. Van Tromp?” he returned 
roughly, and without taking any notice of 
the proffered hand. 

“The same, sir/' replied the Admiral. 
“ Pray be seated.” 

“No, sir,” said the Squire point-blank, 
“I will not be seated. I am told that you 
are an admiral,” he added. 

“No, sir, I am not an admiral,” returned 
Van Tromp, who now began to grow nettled 
and to enter into the spirit of the inter- 
view. 

“Then why do you call yourself one, sir?” 

“I have to ask your pardon, I do not,” 
says Van Tromp, as grand as the Pope. 

But nothing was of avail against the 
Squire. 

“You sail under false colours from be- 
ginning to end,” he said. “Your very house 
was taken under a sham name.” 

“It is not my house. I am my daughter's 

91 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
guest,” replied the Admiral. “If it were my 
house ” 

“Well?” said the Squire, “what then? 
hey?” 

The Admiral looked at him nobly, but 
was silent. 

“Look here,” said Mr. Naseby, “this in- 
timidation is a waste of time; it is thrown 
away on me, sir; it will not succeed with me. 
I will not permit you even to gain time by 
your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you under- 
stand what brings me here.” 

“ I am entirely at a loss to account for your 
intrusion,” bows and waves Van Tromp. 

“ I will try to tell you, then. I come here 
as a father” — down came the riding whip 
upon the table — “ I have right and justice 
upon my side. I understand your calcula- 
tions, but you calculated without me. I am 
a man of the world, and I see through you 
and your manoeuvres. I am dealing now 
with a conspiracy — I stigmatise it as such, 
and I will expose it and crush it. And now 
I order you to tell me how far things have 
gone, and whither you have smuggled my 
unhappy son. ” 

92 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“My God, sir!"’ Van Tromp broke out, 
“ I have had about enough of this. Your son? 
God knows where he is for me! What the 
devil have I to do with your son? My 
daughter is out, for the matter of that; I 
might ask you where she is, and what would 
you say to that? But this is all midsummer 
madness. Name your business distinctly and 
be off.” 

“How often am I to tell you?” cried the 
Squire. “ Where did your daughter take my 
son to-day in that cursed pony carriage?” 

“In a pony carriage?” repeated Van 
Tromp. 

“ Yes, sir — with luggage.” 

“Luggage?” — Van Tromp had turned a 
little pale. 

“Luggage, I said — luggage!” shouted 
Naseby. “You may spare me this dissimu- 
lation. Where’s my son? You are speaking 
to a father, sir, a father.” 

“But, sir, if this be true,” out came Van 
Tromp in a new key, “it is I who have an 
explanation to demand.” 

“Precisely. There is the conspiracy,” re- 
torted Naseby. “Oh,” he added, “I am a 

93 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
man of the world. I can see through and 
through you.” 

Van Tromp began to understand. 

“You speak a great deal about being a 
father, Mr. Naseby,” said he; “I believe 
you forget that the appellation is common 
to both of us. I am at a loss to figure to my- 
self, however dimly, how any man — I have 
not said any gentleman — could so brazenly 
insult another as you have been insulting 
me since you entered this house. For the first 
time I appreciate your base insinuations, 
and I despise them and you. You were, I am 
told, a manufacturer; I am an artist; I have 
seen better days; I have moved in societies 
where you would not be received, and dined 
where you would be glad to pay a pound to 
see me dining. The so-called aristocracy of 
wealth, sir, I despise. I refuse to help you; 
I refuse to be helped by you. There lies the 
door.” 

And the Admiral stood forth in a halo. 

It was then that Dick entered. He had 
been waiting in the porch for some time 
back, and Esther had been listlessly stand- 
ing by his side. He had put out his hand to 

94 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
bar her entrance, and she had submitted 
without surprise; and though she seemed 
to listen, she scarcely appeared to compre- 
hend. Dick, on his part, was as white as a 
sheet; his eyes burned and his lips trembled 
with anger as he thrust the door suddenly 
open, introduced Esther with ceremonious 
gallantry, and stood forward and knocked 
his hat firmer on his head like a man about 
to leap. 

“What is all this?” he demanded. 

“Is this your father, Mr. Naseby?” in- 
quired the Admiral. 

“It is,” said the young man. 

“ I make you my compliments,” returned 
Van Tromp. 

“Dick!” cried his father, suddenly break- 
ing forth, “it is not too late, is it? I have 
come here in time to save you. Come, come 
away with me — come away from this 
place.” 

And he fawned upon Dick with his hands. 

“Keep your hands off me,” cried Dick, 
not meaning unkindness, but because his 
nerves were shattered by so many succes- 
sive miseries. 


95 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“No, no,” said the old man, “don't re- 
pulse your father, Dick, when he has come 
here to save you. Don't repulse me, my boy. 
Perhaps I have not been kind to you, not 
quite considerate, too harsh ; my boy, it was 
not for want of love. Think of old times. I 
was kind to you then, was I not? When you 
were a child, and your mother was with us.” 
Mr. Naseby was interrupted by a sort of sob. 
Dick stood looking at him in a maze. “Come 
away,” pursued the father in a whisper; 
“you need not be afraid of any conse- 
quences. I am a man of the world, Dick; and 
she can have no claim on you — no claim, 
I tell you; and we'll be handsome too, Dick 
— we’ll give them a good round figure, 
father and daughter, and there’s an end.” 

He had been trying to get Dick towards 
the door, but the latter stood off. 

“You had better take care, sir, how you 
insult that lady,” said the son, as black as 
night. 

“You would not choose between your 
father and your mistress?” said the father. 

“What do you call her, sir?” cried Dick, 
high and clear. 

96 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

Forbearance and patience were not among 
Mr. Naseby’s qualities. 

“ I called her your mistress/' he shouted, 
“and I might have called her a " 

“That is an unmanly lie," replied Dick, 
slowly. 

“Dick!" cried the father, “Dick!" 

“ I do not care," said the son, strengthen- 
ing himself against his own heart; “I — 1 
have said it, and it's the truth." 

There was a pause. 

“Dick," said the old man at last, in a 
voice that was shaken as by a gale of wind, 
“ I am going. I leave you with your friends, 
sir — with your friends. I came to serve 
you, and now I go away a broken man. For 
years I have seen this coming, and now it 
has come. You never loved me. Now you 
have been the death of me. You may boast 
of that. Now I leave you. God pardon you!" 

With that he was gone; and the three who 
remained together heard his horse's hoofs 
descend the lane. Esther had not made a 
sign throughout the interview, and still 
kept silence now that it was over; but the 
Admiral, who had once or twice moved for- 

97 


THE STORY OF A LIE 
ward and drawn back again, now advanced 
for good. 

“You are a man of spirit, sir,” said he to 
Dick; “but though I am no friend to parental 
interference, I will say that you are heavy 
on the governor.” Then he added with a 
chuckle: “You began, Richard, with a silver 
spoon, and here you are in the water like 
the rest. Work, work, nothing like work. 
You have parts, you have manners; why, 
with application, you may die a millionaire !” 

Dick shook himself; he took Esther by 
the hand, looking at her mournfully. 

“Then this is farewell,” he said. 

“Yes,” she answered. There was no tone 
in her voice, and she did not return his gaze. 

“For ever,” added Dick. 

“For ever,” she repeated mechanically. 

“ I have had hard measure,” he continued. 
“In time, I believe I could have shown you 
I was worthy, and there was no time long 
enough to show how much I loved you. But 
it was not to be. I have lost all.” 

He relinquished her hand, still looking at 
her, and she turned to leave the room. 

“Why, what in fortune's name is the 

98 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

meaning of all this?” cried Van Tromp. 
“ Esther, come back!” 

“ Let her go,” said Dick, and he watched 
her disappear with strangely mingled feel- 
ings. For he had fallen into that stage when 
men have the vertigo of misfortune, court 
the strokes of destiny, and rush towards 
anything decisive, that it may free them 
from suspense though at the cost of ruin. 
It is one of the many minor forms of sui- 
cide. 

“She did not love me,” he said, turning 
to her father. 

“I feared as much,” said he, “when I 
sounded her. Poor Dick, poor Dick! And 
yet I believe I am as much cut up as you 
are. I was born to see others happy.” 

“You forget,” returned Dick, with some- 
thing like a sneer, “that I am now a pauper.” 

Van Tromp snapped his fingers. 

“Tut!” said he; “Esther has plenty for 
us all.” 

Dick looked at him with some wonder. 
It had never dawned upon him that the 
shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging 
parasite was yet, after all and in spite of all, 

99 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; 
yet so it was. 

“Now,” said Dick, “ I must go.” 

“Go?” cried Van Tromp. “Where? Not 
one foot, Mr. Richard Naseby. Here you 
shall stay in the meantime! and — well, and 
do something practical — advertise for a 
situation as private secretary — and when 
you have it, go and welcome. But in the 
meantime, sir, no false pride; we must stay 
with our friends; we must sponge a while 
on Papa Van Tromp, who has sponged so 
often upon us.” 

“ By God,” cried Dick, “ I believe you are 
the best of the lot.” 

“Dick, my boy,” replied the Admiral, 
winking, “you mark me, I am not the 
worst.” 

“Then why,” began Dick, and then paused. 
“ But Esther,” he began again, once more to 
interrupt himself. “The fact is, Admiral,” 
he came out with it roundly now, “your 
daughter wished to run away from you to- 
day, and I only brought her back with dif- 
ficulty.” 

“In the pony-carriage?” asked the Ad- 


100 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

miral, with the silliness of extreme sur- 
prise. 

“ Yes,” Dick answered. 

“Why, what the devil was she running 
away from?” 

Dick found the question unusually hard 
to answer. 

“Why,” said he, “you know you're a bit 
of a rip.” 

“I behave to that girl, sir, like an arch- 
deacon,” replied Van Tromp warmly. 

“Well — excuse me — but you know you 
drink,” insisted Dick. 

“ I know that I was a sheet in the wind’s 
eye, sir, once — once only, since I reached 
this place,” retorted the Admiral. “And 
even then I was fit for any drawing-room. 
I should like you to tell me how many 
fathers, lay and clerical, go upstairs every 
day with a face like a lobster and cod’s eyes 
— and are dull, upon the back of it — not 
even mirth for the money ! No, if that’s what 
she runs for, all I say is, let her run.” 

“You see,” Dick tried it again, “she has 
fancies ” 

“Confound her fancies!” cried Van 


IOI 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

Tromp. “ I used her kindly; she had her own 
way; I was her father. Besides, I had taken 
quite a liking to the girl, and meant to stay 
with her for good. But I tell you what it is, 
Dick, since she has trifled with you — oh, 
yes, she did though ! — and since her old 
papa's not good enough for her — the devil 
take her, I say." 

“You will be kind to her at least?" said 
Dick. 

“I never was unkind to a living soul," 
replied the Admiral. “Firm I can be, but 
not unkind." 

“Well," said Dick, offering his hand. 
“God bless you, and farewell." 

The Admiral swore by all his gods he 
should not go. “Dick," he said, “you are a 
selfish dog; you forget your old Admiral. 
You wouldn't leave him alone, would you?" 

It was useless to remind him that the 
house was not his to dispose of, that being 
a class of considerations to which his in- 
telligence was closed; so Dick tore himself 
off by force, and shouting a good-bye, made 
off along the lane to Thymebury. 


102 


THE STORY OF A LIE 


IX 

IN WHICH THE LIBERAL EDITOR 
APPEARS AS “DEUS EX MACH IN A ” 

It was perhaps a week later, as old Mr. 
Naseby sat brooding in his study, that there 
was shown in upon him, on urgent business, 
a little he£fic gentleman shabbily attired. 

“ I have to ask pardon for this intrusion, 
Mr. Naseby/' he said; “but I come here to 
perform a duty. My card has been sent in, 
but perhaps you may not know, what it 
does not tell you, that I am the editor of the 
Thymebury Star." 

Mr. Naseby looked up indignant. 

“I cannot fancy," he said, “that we have 
much in common to discuss." 

“ I have only a word to say — one piece 
of information to communicate. Some 
months ago, we had — you will pardon my 
referring to it, it is absolutely necessary — 
but we had an unfortunate difference as to 
fafts." 

“Have you come to apologise?" asked 
the Squire sternly. 


103 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

“No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On 
the morning in question, your son, Mr. 
Richard Naseby " 

“I do not permit his name to be men- 
tioned." 

“You will, however, permit me,” replied 
the Editor. 

“You are cruel," said the Squire. He was 
right, he was a broken man. 

Then the Editor described Dick's warn- 
ing visit; and how he had seen in the lad's 
eye that there was a thrashing in the wind, 
and had escaped through pity only — so 
the Editor put it — “through pity only, 
sir. And oh, sir," he went on, “if you had 
seen him speaking up for you, I am sure 
you would have been proud of your son. I 
know I admired the lad myself, and indeed 
that's what brings me here." 

“ I have misjudged him," said the Squire. 
“ Do you know where he is?" 

“Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury.” 

“You can take me to him?" 

“lean." 

“1 pray God he may forgive me," said 
the father. 


104 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

And he and the Editor made post-haste 
for the county town. 

Next day the report went abroad that 
Mr. Richard was reconciled to his father 
and had been taken home to Naseby House. 
He was still ailing, it was said, and the 
Squire nursed him like the proverbial 
woman. Rumour, in this instance, did no 
more than justice to the truth; and over 
the sick-bed many confidences were ex- 
changed, and clouds that had been growing 
for years passed away in a few hours, and, as 
fond mankind loves to hope, forever. Many 
long talks had been fruitless in external 
action, though fruitful for the understand- 
ing of the pair; but at last, one showery 
Tuesday, the Squire might have been ob- 
served upon his way to the cottage in the 
lane. 

The old gentleman had arranged his 
features with a view to self-command, rather 
than external cheerfulness; and he entered 
the cottage on his visit of conciliation with 
the bearing of a clergyman come to announce 
a death. 

The Admiral and his daughter were both 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

within, and both looked upon their visitor 
with more surprise than favour. 

“Sir,” said he to Van Tromp, “I am told 
I have done you much injustice.” 

There came a little sound in Esther's 
throat, and she put her hand suddenly to 
her heart. 

“You have, sir; and the acknowledgment 
suffices,” replied the Admiral. “I am pre- 
pared, sir, to be easy with you, since I hear 
you have made it up with my friend Dick. 
But let me remind you that you owe some 
apologies to this young lady also.” 

“ I shall have the temerity to ask for more 
than her forgiveness,” said the Squire. “Miss 
Van Tromp,” he continued, “once I was in 
great distress, and knew nothing of you or 
your character; but I believe you will pardon 
a few rough words to an old man who asks 
forgiveness from his heart. I have heard 
much of you since then; for you have a fer- 
vent advocate in my house. I believe you 
will understand that I speak of my son. He 
is, I regret to say, very far from well ; he does 
not pick up as the dodfors had expedfed; he 
has a great deal upon his mind, and, to tell 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

the truth, my girl, if you won't help us, I am 
afraid I shall lose him. Come, now, forgive 
him ! I was angry with him once myself, and 
I found I was in the wrong. This is only a 
misunderstanding, like the other, believe 
me; and, with one kind movement, you may 
give happiness to him, and to me, and to 
yourself." 

Esther made a movement towards the 
door, but long before she reached it she had 
broken forth sobbing. 

“It is all right," said the Admiral; “I 
understand the sex. Let me make you my 
compliments, Mr. Naseby." 

The Squire was too much relieved to be 
angry. 

“My dear," said he to Esther, “you must 
not agitate yourself." 

“She had better go up and see him right 
away," suggested Van Tromp. 

“ I had not ventured to propose it," re- 
plied the Squire. “Les convenances, I be- 
lieve " 

“Je m’en fiche," cried the Admiral, snap- 
ping his fingers. “She shall go and see my 
friend Dick. Run and get ready, Esther." 

107 


THE STORY OF A LIE 

Esther obeyed. 

“She has not — has not run away again?” 
inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as she was 
gone. 

“No,” said Van Tromp, “not again. She 
is a devilish odd girl though, mind you that.” 

“ But I cannot stomach the man with the 
carbuncles,” thought the Squire. 

And this is why there is a new household 
and a brand-new baby in Naseby Dower 
House; and why the great Van Tromp lives 
in pleasant style upon the shores of Eng- 
land; and why twenty-six individual copies 
of the Thymebury Star are received daily 
at the door of Naseby House. 



108 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN 
NICHOLSON 







THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN 
NICHOLSON 


I 


IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND 

?OHN VAREY NICHOLSON was 
stupid; yet, stupider men than he 
are now sprawling in Parliament, 
and lauding themselves as the authors of 
their own distinftion. He was of a fat habit, 
even from boyhood, and inclined to a cheer- 
ful and cursory reading of the face of life; 
and possibly this attitude of mind was the 
original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond 
this hint philosophy is silent on his career, 
and superstition steps in with the more 
ready explanation that he was detested of 
the gods. 

His father — that iron gentleman — had 
long ago enthroned himself on the heights 
of the Disruption Principles. What these are 
(and in spite of their grim name they are 


hi 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

quite innocent) no array of terms would 
render thinkable to the merely English in- 
telligence; but to the Scot they often prove 
unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson 
found in them the milk of lions. About the 
period when the churches convene at Edin- 
burgh in their annual assemblies, he was to 
be seen descending the mound in the com- 
pany of divers red-headed clergymen: these 
voluble, he only contributing oracular nods, 
brief negatives, and the austere spectacle 
of his stretched upper lip. The names of 
Candlish and Begg were frequently in these 
interviews, and occasionally the talk ran 
on the Residuary Establishment and the 
doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight 
little theological kingdom of Scotland might 
have listened and gathered literally nothing. 
And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull 
man) knew this, and raged at it. He knew 
there was a vast world outside, to whom 
Disruption Principles were as the chatter of 
tree-top apes; the paper brought him chill 
whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who 
had asked lightly if he did not belong to the 
Church of Scotland and then had failed to 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

be much interested by his elucidation of that 
nice point; it was an evil, wild, rebellious 
world, lying sunk in do^enedness, for noth- 
ing short of a Scot's word will paint this 
Scotsman's feelings. And when he entered 
into his own house in Randolph Crescent 
(south side), and shut the door behind him, 
his heart swelled with security. Here, at 
least, was a citadel impregnable by right- 
hand defections or left-hand extremes. 
Here was a family where prayers came at 
the same hour, where the Sabbath literature 
was unimpeachably selected, where the 
guest who should have leaned to any false 
opinion was instantly set down, and over 
which there reigned all week, and grew 
denser on Sundays, a silence that was agree- 
able to his ear, and a gloom that he found 
comfortable. 

Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, 
and left him with three children: a daughter 
two years, and a son about eight years 
younger than John; and John himself, the 
unlucky bearer of a name infamous in Eng- 
lish history. The daughter, Maria, was a 
good girl — dutiful, pious, dull, but so 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

easily startled that to speak to her was 
quite a perilous enterprise. “ I don’t think 
I care to talk about that, if you please,” she 
would say, and strike the boldest speechless 
by her unmistakable pain; this upon all 
topics — dress, pleasure, morality, politics, 
in which the formula was changed to “ my 
papa thinks otherwise,” and even religion, 
unless it was approached with a particular 
whining tone of voice. Alexander, the 
younger brother, was sickly, clever, fond of 
books and drawing, and full of satirical re- 
marks. In the midst of these, imagine that 
natural, clumsy, unintelligent, and mirthful 
animal, John; mighty well-behaved in com- 
parison with other lads, although not up to 
the mark of the house in Randolph Cres- 
cent; full of a sort of blundering affection, 
full of caresses which were never very 
warmly received; full of sudden and loud 
laughter which rang out in that still house 
like curses. Mr. Nicholson himself had a 
great fund of humour, of the Scots order — 
intelledtual, turning on the observation of 
men; his own character, for instance — if 
he could have seen it in another — would 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

have been a rare feast to him; but his son's 
empty guffaws over a broken plate, and 
empty, almost light-hearted remarks, struck 
him with pain as the indices of a weak mind. 

Outside the family John had early at- 
tached himself (much as a dog may follow 
a marquis) to the steps of Alan Houston, 
a lad about a year older than himself, idle, 
a trifle wild, the heir to a good estate which 
was still in the hands of a rigorous trustee, 
and so royally content with himself that he 
took John's devotion as a thing of course. 
The intimacy was gall to Mr. Nicholson; it 
took his son from the house, and he was a 
jealous parent; it kept him from the office, 
and he was a martinet ; lastly, Mr. Nicholson 
was ambitious for his family (in which, and 
the Disruption Principles, he entirely lived), 
and he hated to see a son of his play second 
fiddle to an idler. After some hesitation, he 
ordered that the friendship should cease — 
an unfair command, though seemingly in- 
spired by the spirit of prophecy; and John, 
saying nothing, continued to disobey the 
order under the rose. 

John was nearly nineteen when he was 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

one day dismissed rather earlier than usual 
from his father's office, where he was study- 
ing the practice of the law. It was Saturday; 
and except that he had a matter of four 
hundred pounds in his pocket which it was 
his duty to hand over to the British Linen 
Company's Bank, he had the whole after- 
noon at his disposal. He went by Prince's 
Street enjoying the mild sunshine, and the 
little thrill of easterly wind that tossed the 
, flags along that terrace of palaces, and tum- 
bled the green trees in the garden. The band 
was playing down in the valley under the 
castle; and when it came to the turn of the 
pipers, he heard their wild sounds with a 
stirring of the blood. Something distantly 
martial woke in him; and he thought of 
Miss Mackenzie, whom he was to meet that 
day at dinner. 

Now, it is undeniable that he should have 
gone diredtly to the bank, but right in the 
way stood the billiard-room of the hotel 
where Alan was almost certain to be found; 
and the temptation proved too strong. He 
entered the billiard-room, and was instantly 
greeted by his friend, cue in hand. 

116 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
“ Nicholson/' said he, “ I want you to 
lend me a pound or two till Monday/' 

“ You've come to the right shop, haven't 
you ? " returned John. “ I have twopence." 

“ Nonsense," said Alan. “ You can get 
some. Go and borrow at your tailor’s; they 
all do it. Or I'll tell you what: pop your 
watch." 

“ Oh, yes, I dare say," said John. “ And 
how about my father ? " 

“ How is he to know ? He doesn't wind 
it up for you at night, does he ? " inquired 
Alan, at which John guffawed. “ No, seri- 
ously; I am in a fix," continued the tempter. 
“ I have lost some money to a man here. 
I'll give it you to-night, and you can get the 
heir-loom out again on Monday. Come; it's 
a small service, after all. I would do a good 
deal more for you." 

Whereupon John went forth, and 
pawned his gold watch under the assumed 
name of John Froggs, 85 Pleasance. But 
the nervousness that assailed him at the 
door of that inglorious haunt — a pawnshop 
— and the effort necessary to invent the 
pseudonym which, somehow, seemed to 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

him a necessary part of the procedure, had 
taken more time than he imagined; and 
when he returned to the billiard- room with 
the spoils, the bank had already closed its 
doors. 

This was a shrewd knock. “ A piece of 
business had been negledted.” He heard 
these words in his father’s trenchant voice, 
and trembled, and then dodged the thought. 
After all, who was to know ? He must carry 
four hundred pounds about with him till 
Monday, when the negledt could be surrep- 
titiously repaired; and meanwhile, he was 
free to pass the afternoon on the encircling 
divan of the billiard-room, smoking his 
pipe, sipping a pint of ale, and enjoying to 
the masthead the modest pleasures of ad- 
miration. 

None can admire like a young man. Of all 
youth’s passions and pleasures, this is the 
most common and least alloyed; and every 
flash of Alan’s black eyes; every aspedt of 
his curly head; every graceful reach, every 
easy, stand-off attitude of waiting; ay, and 
down to his shirt-sleeves and wrist-links, 
were seen by John through a luxurious 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

glory. He valued himself by the possession 
of that royal friend, hugged himself upon 
the thought, and swam in warm azure; his 
own defeats, like vanquished difficulties, be- 
coming things on which to plume himself. 
Only when he thought of Miss Mackenzie 
there fell upon his mind a shadow of regret; 
that young lady was worthy of better things 
than plain John Nicholson, still known 
among school-mates by the derisive name 
of “ Fatty ”; and he felt, if he could chalk a 
cue, or stand at ease, with such a careless 
grace as Alan, he could approach the objedt 
of his sentiments with a less crushing sense 
of inferiority. 

Before they parted, Alan made a proposal 
that was startling in the extreme. He would 
be at Colette's that night about twelve, he 
said. Why should not John come there and 
get the money ? To go to Colette's was to 
see life, indeed; it was wrong; it was against 
the laws; it partook, in a very dingy man- 
ner, of adventure. Were it known, it was 
the sort of exploit that disconsidered a 
young man for good with the more serious 
classes, but gave him a standing with the 

.119 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

riotous. And yet Colette's was not a hell; it 
could not come, without vaulting hyperbole, 
under the rubric of a gilded saloon; and, if it 
was a sin to go there, the sin was merely 
local and municipal. Colette (whose name 
I do not know how to spell, for I was never 
in epistolary communication with that hos- 
pitable outlaw) was simply an unlicensed 
publican, who gave suppers after eleven at 
night, the Edinburgh hour of closing. If you 
belonged to a club, you could get a much 
better supper at the same hour, and lose 
not a jot in public esteem. But if you lacked 
that qualification, and were an hungered, or 
inclined toward conviviality at unlawful 
hours, Colette’s was your only port. You 
were very ill-supplied. The company was 
not recruited from the Senate or the Church, 
though the Bar was very well represented 
on the only occasion on which I flew in the 
face of my country’s laws, and, taking my 
reputation in my hand, penetrated into that 
grim supper-house. And Colette’s fre- 
quenters, thrillingly conscious of wrong- 
doing and “ that two-handed engine (the 
policeman) at the door,” were perhaps in- 


120 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

dined to somewhat feverish excess. But the 
place was in no sense a very bad one; and it 
is somewhat strange to me, at this distance 
of time, how it had acquired its dangerous 
repute. 

In precisely the same spirit as a man may 
debate a project to ascend the Matterhorn 
or to cross Africa, John considered Alan's 
proposal, and, greatly daring, accepted it. As 
he walked home, the thoughts of this excur- 
sion out of the safe places of life into the 
wild and arduous, stirred and struggled in 
his imagination with the image of Miss 
Mackenzie — incongruous and yet kindred 
thoughts, for did not each imply unusual 
tightening of the pegs of resolution ? did 
not each woo him forth and warn him back 
again into himself ? 

Between these two considerations, at 
least, he was more than usually moved; and 
when he got to Randolph Crescent, he quite 
forgot the four hundred pounds in the inner 
pocket of his great-coat, hung up the coat, 
with its rich freight, upon his particular pin 
of the hat-stand; and in the very aftion 
sealed his doom. 


121 


JOHN NICHOLSON 


II 

IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRL- 
WIND 

About half past ten it was John’s brave 
good fortune to offer his arm to Miss Mac- 
kenzie, and escort her home. The night was 
chill and starry; all the way eastward the 
trees of the different gardens rustled and 
looked black. Up the stone gully of Leith 
Walk, when they came to cross it, the breeze 
made a rush and set the flames of the street- 
lamps quavering; and when at last they 
had mounted to the Royal Terrace, where 
Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt fresh- 
ness came in their faces from the sea. These 
phases of the walk remained written on 
John’s memory, each emphasized by the 
touch of that light hand on his arm; and 
behind all these aspedts of the nodfurnal 
city he saw, in his mind’s eye, a picture of 
the lighted drawing-room at home where he 
had sat talking with Flora; and his father, 
from the other end, had looked on with a 
kind and ironical smile. John had read the 


122 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

significance of that smile, which might have 
escaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had re- 
marked his son’s entanglement with satis- 
faction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if 
it still was a thought contemptuous, had im- 
plied consent. 

At the captain’s door the girl held out 
her hand, with a certain emphasis; and John 
took it and kept it a little longer, and said, 
“ Good-night, Flora, dear,” and was in- 
stantly thrown into much fear by his pre- 
sumption. But she only laughed, ran up the 
steps, and rang the bell; and while she was 
waiting for the door to open, kept close in 
the porch, and talked to him from that 
point as out of a fortification. She had a 
knitted shawl over her head; her blue High- 
land eyes took the light from the neigh- 
bouring street-lamp and sparkled; and 
when the door opened and closed upon her, 
John felt cruelly alone. 

He proceeded slowly back along the ter- 
race in a tender glow; and when he came to 
Greenside Church, he halted in a doubtful 
mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to 
his left, lay the way to Colette’s, where Alan 

123 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

would soon be looking for his arrival, and 
where he would now have no more con- 
sented to go than he would have willfully 
wallowed in a bog; the touch of the girl’s 
hand on his sleeve, and the kindly light in 
his father’s eyes, both loudly forbidding. 
But right before him was the way home, 
which pointed only to bed, a place of little 
ease for one whose fancy was strung to the 
lyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent 
heart was just then tumultuously moved. 
The hill-top, the cool air of the night, the 
company of the great monuments, the sight 
of the city under his feet, with its hills and 
valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew 
him by all he had of the poetic, and he 
turned that way; and by that quite innocent 
deflexion, ripened the crop of his venial 
errors for the sickle of destiny. 

On a seat on the hill above Green side he 
sat for perhaps half an hour, looking down 
upon the lamps of Edinburgh, and up at 
the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the 
resolves he formed; beautiful and kindly 
were the vistas of future life that sped be- 
fore him. He uttered to himself the name of 


124 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

Flora in so many touching and dramatic 
keys, that he became at length fairly melted 
with tenderness, and could have sung aloud. 
At that jundfure a certain creasing in his 
great-coat caught his ear. He put his hand 
into his pocket, pulled forth the envelope 
that held the money, and sat stupefied. 
The Calton Hill, about this period, had an 
ill name of nights; and to be sitting there 
with four hundred pounds that did not be- 
long to him was hardly wise. He looked up. 
There was a man in a very bad hat a little 
on one side of him, apparently looking at 
the scenery; from a little on the other a 
second night-walker was drawing very 
quietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope 
fell from his hands; he stooped to get it, and 
at the same moment both men ran in and 
closed with him. 

A little after, he got to his feet very sore 
and shaken, the poorer by a purse which 
contained exactly one penny postage-stamp, 
by a cambric handkerchief, and by the all- 
important envelope. 

Here was a young man on whom, at the 
highest point of loverly exaltation, there 

125 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported 
alone; and not many hundred yards away 
his greatest friend was sitting at supper — 
ay, and even expecting him. Was it not in 
the nature of man that he should run there ? 
He went in quest of sympathy — in quest 
of that droll article that we all suppose our- 
selves to want when in a strait, and have 
agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, 
with vague but rather splendid expectations 
of relief. Alan was rich, or would be so when 
he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he 
might remedy this misfortune, and avert 
that dreaded interview with Mr. Nicholson, 
from which John now shrunk in imagina- 
tion as the hand draws back from fire. 

Close under the Calton Hill there runs a 
certain narrow avenue, part street, part 
by-road. The head of it faces the doors of 
the prison; its tail descends into the sunless 
slums of the Low Calton. On one hand it is 
overhung by the crags of the hill, on the 
other by an old graveyard. Between these 
two the road-way runs in a trench, sparsely 
lighted at night, sparsely frequented by day, 
and bordered, when it was cleared the place 

126 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. 
One of these was the house of Colette; and 
at his door our ill-starred John was pres- 
ently beating for admittance. In an evil 
hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of 
the contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour 
he penetrated into the somewhat unsavoury 
interior. Alan, to be sure, was there, seated 
in a room lighted by noisy gas-jets, beside 
a dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse 
meal, and in the company of several tipsy 
members of the junior bar. But Alan was 
not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds 
upon a horse-race, had received the news at 
dinner-time, and was now, in default of any 
possible means of extrication, drowning the 
memory of his predicament. He to help 
John! The thing was impossible; he couldn't 
help ^himself. 

“ If you have a beast of a father," said 
he, "I can tell you I have a brute of a 
trustee." 

“ Tm not going to hear my father called 
a beast," said John, with a beating heart, 
feeling that he risked the last sound rivet 
of the chain that bound him to life. 


127 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

But Alan was quite good-natured. 

“ All right, old fellow,” said he. “ Mos' 
respec’able man your father.” And he in- 
troduced his friend to his companions as 
“ old Nicholson the what-d'ye-call-um's 
son.” 

John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul 
walls and maculate table-linen, and even 
down to Colette's villainous casters, seemed 
like objedts in a nightmare. And just then 
there came a knock and a scurrying; 'the 
police, so lamentably absent from the Calton 
Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the 
party, taken flagrante delicto , with their 
glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched 
up to the police office, and all duly sum- 
moned to appear as witnesses in the conse- 
quent case against that arch-shebeener, 
Colette. 

It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered 
company that came forth again. The vague 
terror of public opinion weighed generally 
on them all; but there were private and 
particular horrors on the minds of individ- 
uals. Alan stood in dread of his trustees, 
already sorely tried. One of the group was 

128 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

the son of a country minister, another of a 
judge; John, the unhappiest of all, had 
David Nicholson to father, the idea of facing 
whom on such a scandalous subject was 
physically sickening. They stood awhile con- 
sulting under the buttresses of Saint Giles; 
thence they adjourned to the lodgings of one 
of the number in North Castle Street, where 
(for that matter) they might have had quite 
as good a supper, and far better drink, than 
in the dangerous paradise from which they 
had been routed. There, over an almost 
tearful glass, they debated their position. 
Each explained he had the world to lose if 
the affair went on, and he appeared as a 
witness. It was remarkable what bright 
prospers were just then in the very a£f of 
opening before each of that little company 
of youths, and what pious consideration for 
the feelings of their families began now to 
well from them. Each, moreover, was in an 
odd state of destitution. Not one could bear 
his share of the fine; not one but evinced a 
wonderful twinkle of hope that each of the 
others (in succession) was the very man 
who could step in to make good the deficit. 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

One took a high hand; he could not pay his 
share; if it went to a trial, he should bolt; 
he had always felt the English Bar to be his 
true sphere. Another branched out into 
touching details about his family, and was 
not listened to. John, in the midst of this 
disorderly competition of poverty and 
meanness, sat stunned, contemplating the 
mountain bulk of his misfortunes. 

At last, upon a pledge that each should 
apply to his family with a common frank- 
ness, this convention of unhappy young 
asses broke up, went down the common 
stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, 
with the streets lying dead empty all about 
them, the lamps burning on into the day- 
light in diminished luster, and the birds 
beginning to sound premonitory notes from 
the groves of the town gardens, went each 
his own way with bowed head and echoing 
footfall. 

The rooks were awake in Randolph Cres- 
cent; but the windows looked down, dis- 
creetly blinded, on the return of the prodi- 
gal. John's pass-key was a recent privilege; 
this was the first time it had been used; and, 

i 3 o 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

oh! with what a sickening sense of his un- 
worthiness he now inserted it into the well- 
oiled lock and entered that citadel of the 
proprieties! All slept; the gas in the hall 
had been left faintly burning to light his 
return; a dreadful stillness reigned, broken 
by the deep ticking of the eight-day clock. 
He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the 
hall, waiting and counting the minutes, long- 
ing for any human countenance. But when 
at last he heard the alarm spring its rattle 
in the lower story, and the servants begin 
to be about, he instantly lost heart, and fled 
to his own room, where he threw himself 
upon the bed. 

Ill 

IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HAR- 
VEST HOME 

Shortly after breakfast, at which he as- 
sisted with a highly tragical countenance, 
John sought his father where he sat, pre- 
sumably in religious meditation, on the 
Sabbath mornings. The old gentleman 
looked up with that sour, inquisitive ex- 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

pression that came so near to smiling and 
was so different in effedf. 

“ This is a time when I do not like to be 
disturbed/' he said. 

'‘I know that," returned John; “ but I 
have — I want — I've made a dreadful mess 
of it," he broke out, and turned to the win- 
dow. 

Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable 
time, while his unhappy son surveyed the 
poles in the back green, and a certain yellow 
cat that was perched upon the wall. Despair 
sat upon John as he gazed; and he raged to 
think of the dreadful series of his misdeeds, 
and the essential innocence that lay behind 
them. 

“ Well," said the father, with an obvious 
effort, but in very quiet tones, “ what is 
it?" 

“ Maclean gave me four hundred pounds 
to put in the bank, sir," began John; “ and 
I’m sorry to say that I’ve been robbed of 
it!" 

“ Robbed of it ? "cried Mr. Nicholson, 
with a strong rising inflexion. “ Robbed ? 
Be careful what you say, John!" 

132 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ I can't say anything else, sir; I was just 
robbed of it,” said John, in desperation, 
sullenly. 

“ And where and when did this extraor- 
dinary event take place ? ” inquired the 
father. 

“ On the Cal ton Hill about twelve last 
night.” 

" The Cal ton Hill ? ” repeated Mr. Nich- 
olson. “ And what were you doing there at 
such a time of the night ? ” 

“ Nothing, sir,” says John. 

Mr. Nicholson drew in his breath. 

“ And how came the money in your hands 
at twelve last night ? ” he asked, sharply. 

“ I negledfed that piece of business,” 
said John, anticipating comment; and then 
in his own dialed: “ I clean forgot all about 
it.” 

“ Well,” said his father, “it's a most ex- 
traordinary story. Have you communi- 
cated with the police ? ” 

“ I have,” answered poor John, the blood 
leaping to his face. “They think they know 
the men that did it. I dare say the money 
will be recovered, if that was all,” said he, 


133 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

with a desperate indifference, which his 
father set down to levity; but which sprung 
from the consciousness of worse behind. 

“ Your mother’s watch, too ? ” asked Mr. 
Nicholson. 

“ Oh, the watch is all right! ” cried John. 
“ At least, I mean I was coming to the 
watch — the fa£f is, I am ashamed to say, 
I — I had pawned the watch before. Here is 
the ticket; they didn’t find that; the watch 
can be redeemed; they don’t sell pledges.” 
The lad panted out these phrases, one after 
another, like minute guns; but at the last 
word, which rang in that stately chamber 
like an oath, his heart failed him utterly; 
and the dreaded silence settled on father 
and son. 

It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking 
up the pawn-ticket: “ John Froggs, 85 
Pleasance,” he read; and then turning upon 
John, with a brief flash of passion and dis- 
gust, “ Who is John Froggs ? ” he cried. 

“ Nobody,” said John. “ It was just a 
name.” 

“ An alias,” his father commented. 

"Oh! I think scarcely quite that,” said 

r 34 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

the culprit; “ it’s a form, they all do it, the 
man seemed to understand, we had a great 
deal of fun over the name — ” 

He paused at that, for he saw his father 
wince at the pi<5ture like a man physically 
struck ; and again there was silence. 

“ I do not think,” said Mr. Nicholson, at 
last, “ that I am an ungenerous father. I 
have never grudged you money within rea- 
son, for any avowable purpose; you had 
just to come to me and speak. And now I 
find that you have forgotten all decency and 
all natural feeling, and adtually pawned — 
pawned — your mother's watch. You must 
have had some temptation; I will do you 
the justice to suppose it was a strong one. 
What did you want with this money ? ” 

“ I would rather not tell you, sir,” said 
John. “ It will only make you angry.” 

“ I will not be fenced with,” cried his 
father. “ There must be an end of disin- 
genuous answers. What did you want with 
this money ? ” 

“ To lend it to Houston, sir,” says John. 
“ I thought I had forbidden you to speak 
to that young man ? ” asked the father. 

135 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ Yes, sir/’ said John; “ but I only met 
him.” 

“ Where ? ” came the deadly question. 

And “ In a billiard-room ” was the damn- 
ing answer. Thus, had John's single depar- 
ture from the truth brought instant punish- 
ment. For no other purpose but to see Alan 
would he have entered a billiard- room; but 
he had desired to palliate the fa<5t of his 
disobedience, and now it appeared that he 
frequented these disreputable haunts upon 
his own account. 

Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile 
tidings in silence; and when John stole a 
glance at his father’s countenance, he was 
abashed to see the marks of suffering. 

“ Well,” said the old gentleman, at last, 
“ I cannot pretend not to be simply bowed 
down. I rose this morning what the world 
calls a happy man — happy, at least, in a 
son of whom I thought I could be reasonably 
proud — ” 

But it was beyond human nature to en- 
dure this longer, and John interrupted al- 
most with a scream. “ Oh, wheest ! ” he 
cried, “ that’s not all, that’s not the worst 
136 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

of it — it's nothing! How could I tell you 
were proud of me ? Oh! I wish, I wish that 
I had known; but you always said I was 
such a disgrace! And the dreadful thing is 
this: we were all taken up last night, and 
we have to pay Colette's fine among the six, 
or we'll be had up for evidence — shebeen- 
ing it is. They made me swear to tell you; 
but for my part," he cried, bursting into 
tears, “ I just wish that I was dead! " And 
he fell on his knees before a chair and hid 
his face. 

Whether his father spoke, or whether he 
remained long in the room or at once de- 
parted, are points lost to history. A horrid 
turmoil of mind and body; bursting sobs; 
broken, vanishing thoughts, now of indig- 
nation, now of remorse; broken elementary 
whiffs of consciousness, of the smell of the 
horse-hair on the chair bottom, of the jang- 
ling of church bells that now began to make 
day horrible throughout the confines of the 
city, of the hard floor that bruised his 
knees, of the taste of tears that found their 
way into his mouth: for a period of time, 
the duration of which I cannot guess, while 

137 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these 
were the whole of God's world for John 
Nicholson. 

When at last, as by the touching of a 
spring, he returned again to clearness of 
consciousness and even a measure of com- 
posure, the bells had but just done ringing, 
and the Sabbath silence was still marred by 
the patter of belated feet. By the clock 
above the fire, as well as by these more 
speaking signs, the service had not long 
begun; and the unhappy sinner, if his father 
had really gone to church, might count on 
near two hours of only comparative unhap- 
piness. With his father, the superlative de- 
gree returned infallibly. He knew it by 
every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew 
it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, 
at the mere thought of that calamity. An 
hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three 
quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and 
then would begin again that a<ftive agony 
from which, even in the dull ache of the 
present, he shrunk as from the bite of fire. 
He saw, in a vision, the family pew, the 
somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm- 
138 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
books, Maria with her smelling-salts, his 
father sitting spectacled and critical; and at 
once he was struck with indignation, not 
unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, 
and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished, 
unforgiven. And at the very touch of criti- 
cism, the paternal sanCtity was lessened; 
yet the paternal terror only grew; and the 
two strands of feeling pushed him in the 
same direction. 

And suddenly there came upon him a 
mad fear lest his father should have locked 
him in. The notion had no ground in sense; 
it was probably no more than a reminis- 
cence of similar calamities in childhood, for 
his father’s room had always been the 
chamber of inquisition and the scene of 
punishment; but it stuck so rigorously in 
his mind that he must instantly approach 
the door and prove its untruth. As he went, 
he struck upon a drawer left open in the 
business table. It was the money-drawer, a 
measure of his father’s disarray: the money 
drawer — perhaps a pointing providence! 
Who is to decide, when even divines differ 
between a providence and a temptation ? 

139 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

or who, sitting calmly under his own vine, 
is to pass a judgment on the doings of a 
poor, hunted dog, slavishly afraid, slavishly 
rebellious, like John Nicholson on that par- 
ticular Sunday ? His hand was in the 
drawer, almost before his mind had con- 
ceived the hope; and rising to his new situ- 
ation, he wrote, sitting in his father's chair 
and using his father's blotting-pad, his piti- 
ful apology and farewell: 

“My dear Father, — I have taken the money, 
but I will pay it back as soon as I am able. 
You will never hear of me again. I did not mean 
any harm by anything, so I hope you will try 
and forgive me. I wish you would say good-bye 
to Alexander and Maria, but not if you don't 
want to. I could not wait to see you, really. 
Please try to forgive me. Your affectionate son, 
“John Nicholson." 

The coins abstradted and the missive 
written, he could not be gone too soon from 
the scene of these transgressions; and re- 
membering how his father had once re- 
turned from church, on some slight illness, 
in the middle of the second psalm, he durst 
not even make a packet of a change of 

140 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

clothes. Attired as he was, he slipped from 
the paternal doors, and found himself in 
the cool spring air, the thin spring sunshine, 
and the great Sabbath quiet of the city, 
which was now only pointed by the cawing 
of the rooks. There was not a soul in Ran- 
dolph Crescent, nor a soul in Queen sferry 
Street; in this out-door privacy and the 
sense of escape, John took heart again; and 
with a pathetic sense of leave-taking, he 
even ventured up the lane and stood awhile, 
a strange peri at the gates of a quaint para- 
dise, by the west end of St. George's Church. 
They were singing within; and by a strange 
chance, the tune was “ St. George's, Edin- 
burgh," which bears the name, and was 
first sung in the choir of that church. “ Who 
is this King of Glory ? " went the voices 
from within; and, to John, this was like the 
end of all Christian observances, for he was 
now to be a wild man like Ishmael, and his 
life was to be cast in homeless places and 
with godless people. 

It was thus, with no rising sense of the 
adventurous, but in mere desolation and 
despair, that he turned his back on his 

141 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

native city, and set out on foot for Cali- 
fornia, with a more immediate eye to Glas- 
gow. 

IV 

THE SECOND SOWING 

It is no part of mine to narrate the ad- 
ventures of John Nicholson, which were 
many, but simply his more momentous 
misadventures, which were more than he 
desired, and, by human standards, more 
than he deserved; how he reached California, 
how he was rooked, and robbed, and beaten, 
and starved; how he was at last taken up 
by charitable folk, restored to some degree of 
self-complacency, and installed as a clerk in 
a bank in San Francisco, it would take too 
long to tell; nor in these episodes were there 
any marks of the peculiar Nichol sonic des- 
tiny, for they were just such matters as be- 
fell some thousands of other young adven- 
turers in the same days and places. But 
once posted in the bank, he fell for a time 
into a high degree of good fortune, which, 
as it was only a longer way about to fresh 
disaster, it behooves me to explain. 

142 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

It was his luck to meet a young man in 
what is technically called a " dive/' and, 
thanks to his monthly wages, to extricate 
this new acquaintance from a position of 
present disgrace and possible danger in the 
future. This young man was the nephew of 
one of the Nob Hill magnates, who run the 
San Francisco Stock Exchange, much as 
more humble adventurers, in the corner of 
some public park at home, may be seen to 
perform the simple artifice of pea and thim- 
ble: for their own profit, that is to say, and 
the discouragement of public gambling. It 
was thus in his power — and, as he was of 
grateful temper, it was among the things 
that he desired — to put John in the way 
of growing rich; and thus, without thought 
or industry, or so much as even under- 
standing the game at which he played, but 
by simply buying and selling what he was 
told to buy and sell, that plaything of for- 
tune was presently at the head of between 
eleven and twelve thousand pounds, or, as 
he reckoned it, of upward of sixty thousand 
dollars. 

How he had come to deserve this wealth, 


143 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

any more than how he had formerly earned 
disgrace at home, was a problem beyond 
the reach of his philosophy. It was true that 
he had been industrious at the bank, but 
no more so than the cashier, who had seven 
small children and was visibly sinking in 
decline. Nor was the step which had deter- 
mined his advance — a visit to a dive with 
a month’s wages in his pocket — an adt of 
such transcendent virtue, or even wisdom, 
as to seem to merit the favor of the gods. 
From some sense of this, and of the dizzy 
see-saw — heaven-high, — hell-deep — on 
which men sit clutching; or perhaps fearing 
that the sources of his fortune might be 
insidiously traced to some root in the field 
of petty cash; he stuck to his work, said not 
a word of his new circumstances, and kept 
his account with a bank in a different quar- 
ter of the town. The concealment, innocent 
as it seems, was the first step in the second 
tragi-comedy of John’s existence. 

Meanwhile, he had never written home. 
Whether from diffidence or shame, or a 
touch of anger, or mere procrastination, or 
because (as we have seen) he had no skill in 

144 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

literary arts, or because (as I am some- 
times tempted to suppose) there is a law in 
human nature that prevents young men — 
not otherwise beasts — from the perfor- 
mance of this simple act of piety — months 
and years had gone by, and John had never 
written. The habit of not writing, indeed, 
was already fixed before he had begun to 
come into his fortune; and it was only the 
difficulty of breaking this long silence that 
withheld him from an instant restitution of 
the money he had stolen or (as he preferred 
to call it) borrowed. In vain he sat before 
paper, attending on inspiration; that heav- 
enly nymph, beyond suggesting the words 
“ my dear father/' remained obstinately 
silent; and presently John would crumple 
up the sheet and decide, as soon as he had 
“a good chance," to carry the money home 
in person. And this delay, which is inde- 
fensible, was his second step into the snares 
of fortune. 

Ten years had passed, and John was 
drawing near to thirty. He had kept the 
promise of his boyhood, and was now of a 
lusty frame, verging toward corpulence; 

145 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

good features, good eyes, a genial manner, 
a ready laugh, a long pair of sandy whiskers, 
a dash of an American accent, a close famil- 
iarity with the great American joke, and a 
certain likeness to a R-y-1 P-rs-a-ge, who 
shall remain nameless for me, made up the 
man’s externals as he could be viewed in 
society. Inwardly, in spite of his gross body 
and highly masculine whiskers, he was more 
like a maiden lady than a man of twenty- 
nine. 

It chanced one day, as he was strolling 
down Market Street on the eve of his fort- 
night’s holiday, that his eye was caught by 
certain railway bills, and in very idleness of 
mind he calculated that he might be home 
for Christmas if he started on the morrow. 
The fancy thrilled him with desire, and in 
one moment he decided he would go. 

There was much to be done: his port- 
manteau to be packed, a credit to be got 
from the bank where he was a wealthy cus- 
tomer, and certain offices to be transacted 
for that other bank in which he was an 
humble clerk; and it chanced, in conformity 
with human nature, that out of all this busi- 

146 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

ness it was the last that cametobenegle&ed. 
Night found him, not only equipped with 
money of his own, but once more (as on that 
former occasion) saddled with a consider- 
able sum of other people's. 

Now it chanced there lived in the same 
boarding-house a fellow-clerk of his, an 
honest fellow, with what is called a weak- 
ness for drink — though it might, in this 
case, have been called a strength, for the 
victim had been drunk for weeks together 
without the briefest intermission. To this 
unfortunate John intrusted a letter with an 
inclosure of bonds, addressed to the bank 
manager. Even as he did so he thought he 
perceived a certain haziness of eye and 
speech in his trustee; but he was too hope- 
ful to be stayed, silenced the voice of warn- 
ing in his bosom, and with one and the same 
gesture committed the money to the clerk, 
and himself into the hands of destiny. 

I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on 
John's minutest errors, .his case being so 
perplexing to the moralist; but we have 
done with them now, the roll is closed, the 
reader has the worst of our poor hero, and 

147 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

I leave him to judge for himself whether he 
or John has been the less deserving. Hence- 
forth we have to follow the spectacle of a 
man who was a mere whip-top for calamity; 
on whose unmerited misadventures not 
even the humourist can look without pity, 
and not even the philosopher without 
alarm. 

That same night the clerk entered upon 
a bout of drunkenness so consistent as to 
surprise even his intimate acquaintance. 
He was speedily ejefted from the boarding- 
house; deposited his portmanteau with a 
perfedf stranger, who did not even catch his 
name; wandered he knew not where, and 
was at last hove-to, all standing, in a hos- 
pital at Sacramento. There, under the im- 
penetrable alias of the number of his bed, 
the crapulous being lay for some more days 
unconscious of all things, and of one thing 
in particular: that the police were after him. 
Two months had come and gone before the 
convalescent in the Sacramento hospital was 
identified with Kirkman, the absconding 
San Francisco clerk; even then, there must 
elapse nearly a fortnight more till the per- 

148 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
fe<5t stranger could be hunted up, the port- 
manteau recovered, and John’s letter car- 
ried at length to its destination, the seal 
still unbroken, the inclosure still intaft. 

Meanwhile, John had gone upon his holi- 
days without a word, which was irregular; 
and there had disappeared with him a cer- 
tain sum of money, which was out of all 
bounds of palliation. But he was known to 
be careless, and believed to be honest; the 
manager besides had a regard for him; and 
little was said, although something was no 
doubt thought, until the fortnight was 
finally at an end, and the time had come for 
John to reappear. Then, indeed, the affair 
began to look black; and when inquiries 
were made, and the penniless clerk was 
found to have amassed thousands of dollars, 
and kept them secretly in a rival establish- 
ment, the stoutest of his friends abandoned 
him, the books were overhauled for traces 
of ancient and artful fraud, and though 
none were found, there still prevailed a 
general impression of loss. The telegraph 
was set in motion; and the correspondent 
of the bank in Edinburgh, for which place 

149 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

it was understood that John had armed 
himself with extensive credits, was warned 
to communicate with the police. 

Now this correspondent was a friend of 
Mr. Nicholson's; he was well acquainted 
with the tale of John’s calamitous disap- 
pearance from Edinburgh; and putting one 
thing with another, hasted with the first 
word of this scandal, not to the police, but 
to his friend. The old gentleman had long 
regarded his son as one dead; John’s place 
had been taken, the memory of his faults 
had already fallen to be one of those old 
aches, which awaken again indeed upon oc- 
casion, but which we can always vanquish 
by an effort of the will; and to have the 
long lost resuscitated in a fresh disgrace 
was doubly bitter. 

“ Macewen,” said the old man, “ this 
must be hushed up, if possible. If I give you 
a check for this sum, about which they are 
certain, could you take it on yourself to let 
the matter rest ? ” 

“ I will,” said Macewen. “ I will take the 
risk of it.” 

“ You understand,” resumed Mr. Nich- 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
olson, speaking precisely, but with ashen 
lips, “I do this for my family, not for that 
unhappy young man. If it should turn out 
that these suspicions are correct, and he 
has embezzled large sums, he must lie on 
his bed as he has made it.” And then look- 
ing up at Macewen with a nod, and one of 
his strange smiles: “ Good-bye,” said he; 
and Macewen, perceiving the case to be too 
grave for consolation, took himself off, and 
blessed God on his way home that he was 
childless. 

V 

THE PRODIGALS RETURN 

By a little after noon on the eve of Christ- 
mas, John had left his portmanteau in the 
cloak-room, and stepped forth into Prince's 
Street with a wonderful expansion of the 
soul, such as men enjoy on the completion 
of long-nourished schemes. He was at home 
again, incognito and rich; presently he could 
enter his father's house by means of the 
pass-key, which he had piously preserved 
through all his wanderings; he would throw 
down the borrowed money; there would be 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

a reconciliation, the details of which he fre- 
quently arranged; and he saw himself, dur- 
ing the next month, made welcome in many 
stately houses at many frigid dinner-par- 
ties, taking his share in the conversation 
with the freedom of the man and the trav- 
eller, and laying down the law upon finance 
with the authority of the successful investor. 
But this programme was not to be begun 
before evening — not till just before dinner, 
indeed, at which meal the reassembled fam- 
ily were to sit roseate, and the best wine, 
the modern fatted calf, should flow for the 
prodigal's return. 

Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, 
merry reminiscences crowding round him, 
sad ones also, both with the same surprising 
pathos. The keen, frosty air; the low, rosy, 
wintery sun; the castle, hailing him like an 
old acquaintance; the names of friends on 
door-plates; the sight of friends whom he 
seemed to recognise* and whom he eagerly 
avoided, in the streets; the pleasant chant 
of the north country accent; the dome of 
St. George’s reminding him of his last peni- 
tential moments in the lane, and of that 
152 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

King of Glory whose name had echoed ever 
since in the saddest corner of his memory; 
and the gutters where he had learned to 
slide, and the shop where he had bought 
his skates, and the stones on which he had 
trod, and the railings in which he had rat- 
tled his clachan as he went to school; and 
all those thousand and one nameless par- 
ticulars, which the eye sees without noting, 
which the memory keeps indeed, yet with- 
out knowing, and which, taken one with 
another, build up for us the aspedt of the 
place that we call home: all these besieged 
him, as he went, with both delight and 
sadness. 

His first visit was for Houston, who had a 
house on Regent's Terrace, kept for him in 
old days by an aunt. The door was opened 
(to his surprise) upon the chain, and a 
voice asked him from within what he 
wanted. 

“ I want Mr. Houston — Mr. Alan Hous- 
ton," said he. 

“ And who are ye ? " said the voice. 

“ This is most extraordinary," thought 
John; and then aloud he told his name. 

153 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
“ No young Mr. John ? ” cried the voice, 
with a sudden increase of Scotch accent, 
testifying to a friendlier feeling. 

“ The very same,” said John. 

And the old butler removed his defenses, 
remarking only, “ I thocht ye were that 
man.” But his master was not there; he was 
staying, it appeared, at the house in Mur- 
rayfield; and though the butler would have 
been glad enough to have taken his place 
and given all the news of the family, John, 
struck with a little chill, was eager to be 
gone. Only, the door was scarce closed 
again, before he regretted that he had not 
asked about “ that man.” 

He was to pay no more visits till he had 
seen his father and made all well at home; 
Alan had been the only possible exception, 
and John had not time to go as far as 
Murrayfield. But here he was on Regent’s 
Terrace; there was nothing to prevent him 
going round the end of the hill, and looking 
from without on the Mackenzies’ house. 
As he went, he reflefted that Flora must 
now be a woman of near his own age, and 
it was within the bounds of possibility that 

iS4 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

she was married; but this dishonourable 
doubt he dammed down. 

There was the house, sure enough; but 
the door was of another colour, and what 
was this — two door plates ? He drew 
nearer; the top one bore, with dignified 
simplicity, the words, "Mr. Proudfoot ”; 
the lower one was more explicit, and in- 
formed the passer-by that here was like- 
wise the abode of “ Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proud- 
foot, Advocate.” The Proudfoot s must be 
rich, for no advocate could look to have 
much business in so remote a quarter; and 
John hated them for their wealth and for 
their name, and for the sake of the house 
they desecrated with their presence. He 
remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at 
school, not known: a little, whey-faced ur- 
chin, the despicable member of some lower 
class. Could it be this abortion that had 
climbed to be an advocate, and now lived 
in the birthplace of Flora and the home of 
John's tenderest memories ? The chill that 
had first seized upon him when he heard of 
Houston's absence deepened and struck in- 
ward. For a moment, as he stood under the 

i55 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

doors of that estranged house, and looked 
east and west along the solitary pavement 
of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was 
stirring, the sense of solitude and desola- 
tion took him by the throat, and he wished 
himself in San Francisco. 

And then the figure he made, with his 
decent portliness, his whiskers, the money 
in his purse, the excellent cigar that he now 
lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory 
comparison with that of a certain maddened 
lad who, on a certain spring Sunday ten 
years before, and in the hour of church- 
time silence, had stolen from that city by 
the Glasgow road. In the face of these 
changes, it were impious to doubt fortune’s 
kindness. All would be well yet; the Mac- 
kenzies would be found, Flora, younger and 
lovelier and kinder than before; Alan would 
be found, and would have so nicely discrim- 
inated his behaviour as to have grown, on 
the one hand, into a valued friend of Mr. 
Nicholson’s, and to have remained, upon 
the other, of that exaft shade of joviality 
which John desired in his companions. And 
so, once more, John fell to work discounting 
156 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

the delightful future: his first appearance 
in the family pew; his first visit to his uncle 
Greig, who thought himself so great a finan- 
cier, and on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes 
John was to let in the dazzling daylight of 
the West; and the details in general of that 
unrivalled transformation scene, in which 
he was to display to all Edinburgh a portly 
and successful gentleman in the shoes of 
the derided fugitive. 

The time began to draw near when his 
father would have returned from the office, 
and it would be the prodigal’s cue to enter. 
He strolled westward by Albany Street, 
facing the sunset embers, pleased, he knew 
not why, to move in that cold air and indigo 
twilight, starred with street-lamps. But 
there was one more disenchantment waiting 
him by the way. 

At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to 
light a fresh cigar; the vesta threw, as he 
did so, a strong light upon his features, and 
a man of about his own age stopped at sight 
of it. 

“ I think your name must be Nicholson,” 
said the stranger. 


157 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

It was too late to avoid recognition; and 
besides, as John was now actually on the 
way home, it hardly mattered, and he gave 
way to the impulse of his nature. 

'‘Great Scott !" he cried, “Beatson!" 
and shook hands with warmth. It scarce 
seemed he was repaid in kind. 

“ So you're home again ? " said Beat son. 
“ Where have you been all this long time ? " 

“ In the States," said John — “ Califor- 
nia. I've made my pile though; and it sud- 
denly struck me it would be a noble scheme 
to come home for Christmas." 

“ I see," said Beatson. “ Well, I hope we'll 
see something of you now you're here." 

“ Oh, I guess so," said John, a little 
frozen. 

“ Well, ta-ta," concluded Beatson, and 
he shook hands again and went. 

This was a cruel first experience. It was 
idle to blink faCts: here was John home 
again, and Beatson — Old Beatson — did 
not care a rush. He recalled Old Beatson in 
the past — that merry and affectionate lad 
— and their joint adventures and mishaps, 
the window they had broken with a cata- 
158 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

pult in India Place, the escalade of the castle 
rock, and many another inestimable bond 
of friendship; and his hurt surprise grew 
deeper. Well, after all, it was only on a 
man’s own family that he could count; blood 
was thicker than water, he remembered; 
and the net result of this encounter was to 
bring him to the doorstep of his father’s 
house, with tenderer and softer feelings. 

The night had come; the fanlight over the 
door shone bright; the two windows of the 
dining-room where the cloth was being laid, 
and the three windows of the drawing-room 
where Maria would be waiting dinner, 
glowed softlier through yellow blinds. It 
was like a vision of the past. All this time 
of his absence, life had gone forward with 
an equal foot, and the fires and the gas had 
been lighted, and the meals spread, at the 
accustomed hours. At the accustomed hour, 
too, the bell had sounded thrice to call the 
family to worship. And at the thought, a 
pang of regret for his demerit seized him; 
he remembered the things that were good 
and that he had neglected, and the things 
that were evil and that he had loved; and 


*59 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

it was with a prayer upon his lips that he 
mounted the steps and thrust the key into 
the key-hole. 

He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the 
door softly behind him, and stood there 
fixed in wonder. No surprise of strangeness 
could equal the surprise of that complete 
familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers 
near the stair-railings, there was the clothes- 
brush in the accustomed place; and there, 
on the hat-stand, hung hats and coats that 
must surely be the same as he remembered. 
Ten years dropped from his life, as a pin 
may slip between the fingers; and theocean, 
and the mountains, and the mines, and 
crowded marts and mingled races of San 
Francisco, and his own fortune and his own 
disgrace, became, for that one moment, the 
figures of a dream that was over. 

He took off his hat, and moved mechani- 
cally toward the stand; and there he found 
a small change that was a great one to him. 
The pin that had been his from boyhood, 
where he had flung his balmoral when he 
loitered home from the academy, and his 
first hat when he came briskly back from 

160 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

college or the office — his pin was occupied. 
“ They might have at least respefted my 
pin! ” he thought, and he was moved as by 
a slight, and began at once to recollect that 
he was here an interloper, in a strange 
house, which he had entered almost by a 
burglary, and where at any moment he 
might be scandalously challenged. 

He moved at once, his hat still in his 
hand, to the door of his father’s room, 
opened it, and entered. Mr. Nicholson sat 
in the same place and posture as on that 
last Sunday morning; only he was older, 
and greyer, and sterner; and as he now 
glanced up and caught the eye of his son, a 
strange commotion and a dark flush sprung 
into his face. 

“ Father,” said John, steadily, and even 
cheerfully, for this was a moment against 
which he was long ago prepared, “ father, 
here I am, and here is the money that I 
took from you. I have come back to ask your 
forgiveness, and to stay Christmas with 
you and the children.” 

“ Keep your money,” said the father, 
“ and go! ” 

161 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ Father! " cried John; “ for God's sake 
don't receive me this way. I've come 
for — " 

“ Understand me," interrupted Mr. Nich- 
olson; “ you are no son of mine; and in the 
sight of God, I wash my hands of you. One 
last thing I will tell you; one warning I will 
give you; all is discovered, and you are 
being hunted for your crimes; if you are 
still at large it is thanks to me; but I have 
done all that I mean to do; and from this 
time forth I would not raise one finger — 
not one finger — to save you from the gal- 
lows! And now," with a low voice of abso- 
lute authority, and a single weighty gesture 
of the finger, “ and now — go! " 

VI 

THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD 

How John passed the evening, in what 
windy confusion of mind, in what squalls of 
anger and lulls of sick collapse, in what 
pacing of streets and plunging into public- 
houses, it would profit little to relate. His 
misery, if it were not progressive, yet 

1 6a 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

tended in no way to diminish; for in pro- 
portion as grief and indignation abated, 
fear began to take their place. At first, his 
father's menacing words lay by in some 
safe drawer of memory, biding their hour. 
At first, John was all thwarted affection 
and blighted hope; next bludgeoned vanity 
raised its head again, with twenty mortal 
gashes: and the father was disowned even 
as he had disowned the son. What was this 
regular course of life, that John should have 
admired it ? what were these clock-work 
virtues, from which love was absent? 
Kindness was the test, kindness the aim 
and soul; and judged by such a standard, 
the discarded prodigal — now rapidly 
drowning his sorrows and his reason in 
successive drams — was a creature of a 
lovelier morality than his self-righteous 
father. Yes, he was the better man; he felt 
it, glowed with the consciousness, and en- 
tering a public-house at the corner of How- 
ard Place (whither he had somehow wan- 
dered) he pledged his own virtues in a 
glass — perhaps the fourth since his dis- 
missal. Of that he knew nothing, keeping 

163 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

no account of what he did or where he 
went; and in the general crashing hurry of 
his nerves, unconscious of the approach 
of intoxication. Indeed, it is a question 
whether he were really growing intoxicated, 
or whether at first the spirits did not even 
sober him. For it was even as he drained 
this last glass that his father’s ambiguous 
and menacing words — popping from their 
hiding-place in memory — startled him like 
a hand laid upon his shoulder. “ Crimes, 
hunted, the gallows.” They were ugly 
words; in the ears of an innocent man, per- 
haps all the uglier; for if some judicial error 
were in a£t against him, who should set a 
limit to its grossness or to how far it might 
be pushed? Not John, indeed; he was no 
believer in the powers of innocence, his 
cursed experience pointing in quite other 
ways; and his fears, once wakened, grew 
with every hour and hunted him about the 
city streets. 

It was, perhaps, nearly nine at night; he 
had eaten nothing since lunch, he had drunk 
a good deal, and he was exhausted by emo- 
tion, when the thought of Houston came 

164 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

into his head. He turned, not merely to the 
man as a friend, but to his house as a place 
of refuge. The danger that threatened him 
was still so vague that he knew neither 
what to fear nor where he might expert it; 
but this much at least seemed undeniable, 
that a private house was safer than a public 
inn. Moved by these counsels, he turned at 
once to the Caledonian Station, passed (not 
without alarm) into the bright lights of the 
approach, redeemed his portmanteau from 
the cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a 
cab along the Glasgow road. The change of 
movement and position, the sight of the 
lamps twinkling to the rear, and the smell 
of damp and mould and rotten straw which 
clung about the vehicle, wrought in him 
strange alternations of lucidity and mortal 
giddiness. 

“ I have been drinking/' he discovered; 
“ I must go straight to bed, and sleep." 
And he thanked Heaven for the drowsiness 
that came upon his mind in waves. 

From one of these spells he was awakened 
by the stoppage of the cab; and, getting 
down, found himself in quite a country 

165 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

road, the last lamp of the suburb shining 
some way below, and the high walls of a 
garden rising before him in the dark. The 
Lodge (as the place was named) stood, in- 
deed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined 
another house, but standing in so large a 
garden as to be well out of cry; on all other 
sides, open fields stretched upward to the 
woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward to 
the dells of Ravel ston, or downward toward 
the valley of the Leith. The effect of seclu- 
sion was aided by the great height of the 
garden walls, which were, indeed, conven- 
tual, and, as John had tested in former days, 
defied the climbing schoolboy. The lamp of 
the cab threw a gleam upon the door and 
the not brilliant handle of the bell. 

“ Shall I ring for ye ? ” said the cabman, 
who had descended from his perch and was 
slapping his chest, for the night was bitter. 

“ I wish you would,” said John, putting 
his hand to his brow in one of his accesses 
of giddiness. 

The man pulled at the handle, and the 
clanking of the bell replied from further in 
the garden; twice and thrice he did it, with 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

sufficient intervals; in the great, frosty si- 
lence of the night, the sounds fell sharp and 
small. 

“ Does he expeft ye ? ” asked the driver, 
with that manner of familiar interest that 
well became his port-wine face; and when 
John had told him no, “ Well, then,” said 
the cabman, u if ye’ll tak’ my advice of it, 
we’ll just gang back. And that’s disinter- 
ested, mind ye, for my stables are in the 
Glesgie road.” 

“ The servants must hear,” said John. 

“ Hout! ” said the driver. “ He keeps no 
servants here, man. They’re a’ in the town 
house; I drive him often; it’s just a kind of 
a hermitage, this.” 

“ Give me the bell,” said John; and he 
plucked at it like a man desperate. 

The clamour had not yet subsided before 
they heard steps upon the gravel, and a 
voice of singular nervous irritability cried 
to them through the door, “ Who are you, 
and what do you want ? ” 

“ Alan,” said John, “ it’s me — it’s Fatty 
— John, you know. I’m just come home, 
and I’ve come to stay with you.” 

167 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

There was no reply for a moment, and 
then the door was opened. 

“ Get the portmanteau down,” said John 
to the driver. 

“ Do nothing of the kind,” said Alan; and 
then to John, “ Come in here a moment. I 
want to speak to you.” 

John entered the garden, and the door 
was closed behind him. A candle stood on 
the gravel walk, winking a little in the 
draughts; it threw inconstant sparkles on 
the clumped holly, struck the light and 
darkness to and fro like a veil on Alan’s 
features, and sent his shadow hovering be- 
hind him. All beyond was inscrutable; and 
John’s dizzy brain rocked with the shadow. 
Yet even so, it struck him that Alan was 
pale, and his voice, when he spoke, un- 
natural. 

“ What brings you here to-night ? ” he 
began. “ I don’t want, God knows, to seem 
unfriendly; but I cannot take you in, Nich- 
olson; I cannot do it.” 

" Alan,” said John, “ you’ve just got to! 
You don’t know the mess I’m in; the gov- 
ernor’s turned me out, and I daren’t show 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

my face in an inn, because they're down on 
me for murder or something! ” 

“ For what ? " cried Alan, starting. 

“ Murder, I believe," says John. 

"Murder!" repeated Alan, and passed 
his hand over his eyes. “ What was that 
you were saying ? " he asked again. 

“ That they were down on me," said 
John. “ I’m accused of murder, by what 1 
can make out; and I've really had a dread- 
ful day of it, Alan, and I can’t sleep on the 
road-side on a night like this — at least, 
not with a portmanteau," he pleaded. 

“ Hush!" said Alan, with his head on 
one side; and then, “ Did you hear noth- 
ing ? " he asked. 

“ No," said John, thrilling, he knew not 
why, with communicated terror. “ No, I 
heard nothing; why?" And then, as there 
was no answer, he reverted to his pleading: 
“ But I say, Alan, you’ve just got to take 
me in. I’ll go right away to bed if you have 
anything to do. I seem to have been drink- 
ing; I was that knocked over. I wouldn’t 
turn you away, Alan, if you were down on 
your luck." 


169 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“No?” returned Alan. “Neither will I you, 
then. Come and let’s get your portmanteau.” 

The cabman was paid, and drove off down 
the long, lamp-lighted hill, and the two 
friends stood on the sidewalk beside the 
portmanteau till the last rumble of the 
wheels had died in silence. It seemed to 
John as though Alan attached importance 
to this departure of the cab; and John, who 
was in no state to criticise, shared pro- 
foundly in the feeling. 

When the stillness was once more perfect, 
Alan shouldered the portmanteau, carried 
it in, and shut and locked the garden door; 
and then, once more, abstraction seemed to 
fall upon him, and he stood with his hand 
on the key, until the cold began to nibble at 
John’s fingers. 

“ Why are we standing here ? ” asked 
John. 

“ Eh?” said Alan blankly. 

“ Why, man, you don’t seem yourself,” 
said the other. 

“ No, I’m not myself,” said Alan; and he 
sat down on the portmanteau and put his 
face in his hands. 

!7Q 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

John stood beside him swaying a little, 
and looking about him at the swaying shad- 
ows, the flitting sparkles, and the steady 
stars overhead, until the windless cold be- 
gan to touch him through his clothes on the 
bare skin. Even in his bemused intelligence, 
wonder began to awake. 

“ I say, let's come on to the house," he 
said at last. 

“ Yes, let's come on to the house," re- 
peated Alan. 

And he rose at once, reshouldered the 
portmanteau, and taking the candle in his 
other hand, moved forward to the Lodge. 
This was a long, low building, smothered 
in creepers; and now, except for some chinks 
of light between the dining-room shutters, 
it was plunged in darkness and silence. 

In the hall Alan lighted another candle, 
gave it to John, and opened the door of a 
bedroom. 

“ Here," said he; “go to bed. Don't 
mind me, John. You'll be sorry for me when 
you know." 

“ Wait a bit," returned John; “ I've got 
so cold with all that standing about. Let's 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

go into the dining-room a minute. Just one 
glass to warm me, Alan.” 

On the table in the hall stood a glass, and 
a bottle with a whisky label on a tray. It 
was plain the bottle had been just opened, 
for the cork and corkscrew lay beside it. 

“ Take that,” said Alan, passing John 
the whisky, and then with a certain rough- 
ness pushed his friend into the bedroom, 
and closed the door behind him. 

John stood amazed; then he shook the 
bottle, and, to his further wonder, found it 
partly empty. Three or four glasses were 
gone. Alan must have uncorked a bottle of 
whisky and drank three or four glasses one 
after the other, without sitting down, for 
there was no chair, and that in his own cold 
lobby on this freezing night! It fully ex- 
plained his eccentricities, John reflected 
sagely, as he mixed himself a grog. Poor 
Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful 
thing was drink, and what a slave to it poor 
Alan was, to drink in this unsociable, un- 
comfortable fashion! The man who would 
drink alone, except for health's sake — as 
John was now doing — was a man utterly 

172 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
lost. He took the grog out, and felt hazier, 
but warmer. It was hard work opening the 
portmanteau and finding his night things; 
and before he was undressed, the cold had 
struck home to him once more. “ Well,” 
said he; “ just a drop more. There’s no 
sense in getting ill with all this other 
trouble.” And presently dreamless slumber 
buried him. 

When John awoke it was day. The low 
winter sun was already in the heavens, but 
his watch had stopped, and it was impos- 
sible to tell the hour exactly. Ten, he 
guessed it, and made haste to dress, dismal 
reflexions crowding on his mind. But it 
was less from terror than from regret that 
he now suffered; and with his regret there 
were mingled cutting pangs of penitence. 
There had fallen upon him a blow, cruel, 
indeed, but yet only the punishment of old 
misdoing; and he had rebelled and plunged 
into fresh sin. The rod had been used to 
chasten, and he had bit the chastening fin- 
gers. His father was right; John had justi- 
fied him; John was no guest for decent 
people’s houses, and no fit associate for 

173 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

decent people's children. And had a broader 
hint been needed, there was the case of his 
old friend. John was no drunkard, though 
he could at times exceed; and the picture of 
Houston drinking neat spirits at his hall- 
table struck him with something like dis- 
gust. He hung back from meeting his old 
friend. He could have wished he had not 
come to him; and yet, even now, where else 
was he to turn ? 

These musings occupied him while he 
dressed, and accompanied him into the 
lobby of the house. The door stood open on 
the garden; doubtless, Alan had stepped 
forth; and John did as he supposed his 
friend had done. The ground was hard as 
iron, the frost still rigorous; as he brushed 
among the hollies, icicles jingled and glit- 
tered in their fall; and wherever he went, a 
volley of eager- sparrows followed him. 
Here were Christmas weather and Christ- 
mas morning duly met, to the delight of 
children. This was the day of reunited fami- 
lies, the day to which he had so long looked 
forward, thinking to awake in his own bed 
in Randolph Crescent, reconciled with all 
174 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

men and repeating the foot-prints of his 
youth; and here he was alone, pacing the 
alleys of a wintery garden and filled with 
penitential thoughts. 

And that reminded him: why was he 
alone ? and where was Alan ? The thought 
of the festal morning and the due saluta- 
tions reawakened his desire for his friend, 
and he began to call for him by name. As 
the sound of his voice died away, he was 
aware of the greatness of the silence that 
environed him. But for the twittering of the 
sparrows and the crunching of his own feet 
upon the frozen snow, the whole windless 
world of air hung over him entranced, and 
the stillness weighed upon his mind with a 
horror of solitude. 

Still calling at intervals, but now with a 
moderated voice, he made the hasty circuit 
of the garden, and finding neither man nor 
trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, 
turned at last to the house. About the house 
the silence seemed to deepen strangely. The 
door, indeed, stood open as before; but the 
windows were still shuttered, the chimneys 
breathed no stain into the bright air, there 

i75 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

sounded abroad none of that low stir (per- 
haps audible rather to the ear of the spirit 
than to the ear of the flesh) by which a 
house announces and betrays its human 
lodgers. And yet Alan must be there — 
Alan locked in drunken slumbers, forgetful 
of the return of day, of the holy season, and 
of the friend whom he had so coldly re- 
ceived and was now so churlishly negledfing. 
John's disgust redoubled at the thought; 
but hunger was beginning to grow stronger 
than repulsion, and as a step to breakfast, 
if nothing else, he must find and arouse this 
sleeper. 

He made the circuit of the bedroom quar- 
ters. All, until he came to Alan's chamber, 
were locked from without, and bore the 
marks of a prolonged disuse. But Alan’s 
was a room in commission, filled with 
clothes, knickknacks, letters, books, and 
the conveniences of a solitary man. The fire 
had been lighted; but it had long ago burned 
out, and the ashes were stone cold. The bed 
had been made, but it had not been slept 
in. 

Worse and worse, then; Alan must have 

176 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

fallen where he sat, and now sprawled brut- 
ishly, no doubt, upon the dining-room floor. 

The dining-room was a very long apart- 
ment, and was reached through a passage; 
so that John, upon his entrance, brought 
but little light with him, and must move 
toward the windows with spread arms, 
groping and knocking on the furniture. 
Suddenly he tripped and fell his length over 
a prostrate body. It was what he had looked 
for, yet it shocked him; and he marveled 
that so rough an impadt should not have 
kicked a groan out of the drunkard. Men 
had killed themselves ere now in such ex- 
cesses, a dreary and degraded end that 
made John shudder. What if Alan were 
dead ? There would be a Christmas-day ! 

By this, John had his hand upon the 
shutters, and flinging them back, beheld 
once again the blessed face of the day. 
Even by that light the room had a discom- 
fortable air. The chairs were scattered, and 
one had been overthrown; the table-cloth, 
laid as if for dinner, was twitched upon one 
side, and some of the dishes had fallen to * 
the floor. Behind the table lay the drunkard, 

177 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

still unaroused, only one foot visible to 
John. 

But now that light was in the room, the 
worst seemed over; it was a disgusting busi- 
ness, but not more than disgusting; and it 
was with no great apprehension that John 
proceeded to make the circuit of the table: 
his last comparatively tranquil moment for 
that day. No sooner had he turned the cor- 
ner, no sooner had his eyes alighted on the 
body, than he gave a smothered, breathless 
cry, and fled out of the room and out of the 
house. 

It was not Alan who lay there, but a man 
well up in years, of stern countenance 
and iron-gray locks; and it was no drunk- 
ard, for the body lay in a black pool of 
blood, and the open eyes stared upon the 
ceiling. 

To and fro walked John before the door. 
The extreme sharpness of the air adted on 
his nerves like an astringent, and braced 
them swiftly. Presently, he not relaxing in 
his disordered walk, the images began to 
come clearer and stay longer in his fancy; 
and next the power of thought came back 

178 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

to him, and the horror and danger of his 
situation rooted him to the ground. 

He grasped his forehead, and staring on 
one spot of gravel, pieced together what he 
knew and what he suspected. Alan had 
murdered some one: possibly “ that man ” 
against whom the butler chained the door 
in Regent's Terrace; possibly another; some 
one at least: a human soul, whom it was 
death to slay and whose blood lay spilled 
upon the floor. This was the reason of the 
whisky drinking in the passage, of his un- 
willingness to welcome John, of his strange 
behaviour and bewildered words; this was 
why he had started at and harped upon the 
name of murder; this was why he had stood 
and hearkened, or sat and covered his eyes, 
in the black night. And now he was gone, 
now he had basely fled; and to all his per- 
plexities and dangers John stood heir. 

“ Let me think — let me think," he said, 
aloud, impatiently, even pleadingly, as if to 
some merciless interrupter. In the turmoil 
of his wits, a thousand hints and hopes and 
threats and terrors dinning continuously in 
his ears, he was like one plunged in the 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

hubbub of a crowd. How was he to remem- 
ber — he, who had not a thought to spare 
— that he was himself the author, as well 
as the theater, of so much confusion ? But 
in hours of trial the junto of man’s nature 
is dissolved, and anarchy succeeds. 

It was plain he must stay no longer where 
he was, for here was a new Judicial Error 
in the very making. It was not so plain 
where he must go, for the old Judicial Error, 
vague as a cloud, appeared to fill the habit- 
able world; whatever it might be, it watched 
for him, full-grown, in Edinburgh; it must 
have had its birth in San Francisco; it stood 
guard no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank 
where he should cash his credit; and though 
there were doubtless many other places, 
who should say in which of them it was not 
ambushed ? No, he could not tell where he 
was to go; he must not lose time on these 
insolubilities. Let him go back to the begin- 
ning. It was plain he must stay no longer 
where he was. It was plain, too, that he 
must not flee as he was, for he could not 
carry his portmanteau, and to flee and 
leave it, was to plunge deeper in the mire. 

180 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

He must go, leave the house unguarded, 
find a cab, and return — return after an 
absence ? Had he courage for that ? 

And just then he spied a stain about a 
hand’s breadth on his trouser-leg, and 
reached his finger down to touch it. The 
finger was stained red; it was blood; he 
stared upon it with disgust, and awe, and 
terror, and in the sharpness of the new 
sensation, fell instantly to aft. 

He cleansed his finger in the snow, re- 
turned into the house, drew near with 
hushed footsteps to the dining-room door, 
and shut and locked it. Then he breathed a 
little freer, for here at least was an oaken 
barrier between himself and what he feared. 
Next, he hastened to his room, tore off the 
spotted trousers which seemed in his eyes 
a link to bind him to the gallows, flung them 
in a corner, donned another pair, breathless- 
ly crammed his night things into his port- 
manteau, locked it, swung it with an effort 
from the ground, and with a rush of relief, 
came forth again under the open heavens. 

The portmanteau, being of occidental 
build, was no feather-weight; it had dis- 

181 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

tressed the powerful Alan; and as for John, 
he was crushed under its bulk, and the 
sweat broke upon him thickly. Twice he 
must set it down to rest before he reached 
the gate; and when he had come so far, he 
must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon 
one corner. Here, then, he sat awhile and 
panted; but now his thoughts were sensibly 
lightened; now, with the trunk standing just 
inside the door, some part of his dissocia- 
tion from the house of crime had been 
effected, and the cabman need not pass the 
garden wall. It was wonderful how that re- 
lieved him; for the house, in his eyes, was 
a place to strike the most cursory beholder 
with suspicion, as though the very windows 
had cried murder. 

But there was to be no remission of the 
strokes of fate. As he thus sat, taking breath 
in the shadow of the wall and hopped about 
by sparrows, it chanced that his eye roved to 
the fastening of the door; and what he saw 
plucked him to his feet. The thing locked 
with a spring; once the door was closed, the 
bolt shut of itself; and without a key, there 
was no means of entering from without. 

182 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

He saw himself obliged to one of two 
distasteful and perilous alternatives; either 
to shut the door altogether and set his 
portmanteau out upon the way-side, a won- 
der to all beholders; or to leave the door 
ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday 
school-boy might stray in and stumble on 
the grisly secret. To the last, as the least 
desperate, his mind inclined; but he must 
first insure himself that he was unobserved. 
He peered out, and down the long road: it 
lay dead empty. He went to the corner of 
the by-road that comes by way of Dean; 
there also not a passenger was stirring. 
Plainly it was, now or never, the high tide 
of his affairs; and he drew the door as close 
as he durst, slipped a pebble in the chink, 
and made off downhill to find a cab. 

Half-way down a gate opened, and a 
troop of Christmas children sallied forth in 
the most cheerful humour, followed more 
soberly by a smiling mother. 

‘'And this is Christmas-day ! ” thought 
John ; and could have laughed aloud in tragic 
bitterness of heart. 


JOHN NICHOLSON 


VII 

A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB 

In front of Donaldson’s Hospital, John 
counted it good fortune to perceive a cab 
a great way off, and by much shouting and 
waving of his arm to catch the notice of the 
driver. He counted it good fortune, for the 
time was long to him till he should have 
done forever with the Lodge; and the fur- 
ther he must go to find a cab, the greater 
the chance that the inevitable discovery 
had taken place, and that he should return 
to find the garden full of angry neighbours. 
Yet when the vehicle drew up he was sen- 
sibly chagrined to recognise the port-wine 
cabman of the night before. “ Here,” he 
could not but refleft, “ here is another link 
in the Judicial Error.''’ 

The driver, on the other hand, was 
pleased to drop again upon so liberal a fare; 
and as he was a man — the reader must 
already have perceived — of easy, not to 
say familiar, manners, he dropped at once 
into a vein of friendly talk, commenting on 

184 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

the weather, on the sacred season, which 
struck him chiefly in the light of a day of 
liberal gratuities, on the chance which had 
reunited him to a pleasing customer, and on 
the fact that John had been (as he was 
pleased to call it) visibly “ on the randan ” 
the night before. 

“ And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, 
I must say that,” he continued. “ There’s 
nothing like a dram for ye — if ye’ll 
take my advice of it; and bein’ as it’s 
Christmas, I’m no saying,” he added with 
a fatherly smile, “ but what I would join 
ye mysel’.” 

John had listened with a sick heart. 

“ I’ll give you a dram when we’ve got 
through,” said he, affecting a sprightliness 
which sat on him most unhandsomely, “ and 
not a drop till then. Business first, and 
pleasure afterward.” 

With this promise the jarvey was pre- 
vailed upon to clamber to his place and 
drive, with hideous deliberation, to the door 
of the Lodge. There were no signs as yet of 
any public emotion; only, two men stood 
not far off in talk, and their presence, seen 

185 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

from afar, set John's pulses buzzing. He 
might have spared himself his fright, for 
the pair were lost in some dispute of a 
theological complexion, and with length- 
ened upper lip and enumerating fingers, 
pursued the matter of their difference, and 
paid no heed to John. 

But the cabman proved a thorn in the 
flesh. Nothing would keep him on his perch; 
he must clamber down, comment upon the 
pebble in the door (which he regarded as an 
ingenious but unsafe device), help John with 
the portmanteau, and enliven matters with 
a flow of speech, and especially of questions, 
which I thus condense: 

“ He'll no be here himsel', will he ? No ? 
Well, he's an eccentric man — a fair oddity 

— if ye ken the expression. Great trouble 
with his tenants, they tell me. I've driven 
the fam'ly for years. I drove a cab at his 
father's waddin’. What'll your name be? 

— I should ken your face. Baigrey, ye say ? 
There were Baigrey s about Gilmerton; ye’ll 
be one of that lot ? Then this'll be a friend's 
portmantie, like ? Why ? Because the name 
upon it’s Nucholson ! Oh, if ye're in a hurry, 

186 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

that’s another job. Waverley Brig’ ? Are ye 
for away ?” 

So the friendly toper prated and ques- 
tioned and kept John’s heart in a flutter. 
But to this also, as to other evils under the 
sun, there came a period; and the victim 
of circumstances began at last to rumble 
toward the railway terminus at Waverley 
Bridge. During the transit, he sat with 
raised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy 
fetor of his chariot, and glanced out side- 
long on the holiday face of things, the shut- 
tered shops, and the crowds along the pave- 
ment, much as the rider in the Tyburn cart 
may have observed the concourse gathering 
to his execution. 

At the station his spirits rose again; 
another stage of his escape was fortunately 
ended — he began to spy blue water. He 
called a railway porter, and bade him carry 
the portmanteau to the cloak-room: not 
that he had any notion of delay; flight, in- 
stant flight was his design, no matter 
whither; but he had determined to dismiss 
the cabman ere he named, or even chose, 
his destination, thus possibly balking the 

187 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

Judicial Error of another link. This was his 
cunning aim, and now with one foot on the 
road-way, and one still on the coach-step, 
he made haste to put the thing in practice, 
and plunged his hand into his trousers 
pocket. 

There was nothing there! 

Oh, yes; this time he was to blame. He 
should have remembered, and when he de- 
serted his blood-stained pantaloons, he 
should not have deserted along with them 
his purse. Make the most of his error, and 
then compare it with the punishment! Con- 
ceive his new position, for I lack words to 
picture it; conceive him condemned to re- 
turn to that house, from the very thought 
of which his soul revolted, and once more 
to expose himself to capture on the very 
scene of the misdeed: conceive him linked 
to the mouldy cab and the familiar cabman. 
John cursed the cabman silently, and then 
it occurred to him that he must stop the 
incarceration of his portmanteau; that, at 
least, he must keep close at hand, and he 
turned to recall the porter. But his reflec- 
tions, brief as they had appeared, must have 
1 88 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

occupied him longer than he supposed, and 
there was the man already returning with 
the receipt. 

Well, that was settled; he had lost his 
portmanteau also; for the sixpence with 
which he had paid the Murrayfield Toll was 
one that had strayed alone into his waist- 
coat pocket, and unless he once more suc- 
cessfully achieved the adventure of the 
house of crime, his portmanteau lay in the 
cloak-room in eternal pawn, for lack of a 
penny fee. And then he remembered the 
porter, who stood suggestively attentive, 
words of gratitude hanging on his lips. 

John hunted right and left; he found a 
coin — prayed God that it was a sovereign 
— drew it out, beheld a half-penny, and 
offered it to the porter. 

The man’s jaw dropped. 

"It’s only a half-penny!” he said, 
startled out of railway decency. 

“ I know that,” said John, piteously. 

And here the porter recovered the dignity 
of man. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said he, and would 
have returned the base gratuity. But John, 

189 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

too, would none of it; and as they struggled, 
who must join in but the cabman ? 

“ Hoots, Mr. Baigrey,” said he, “ you 
surely forgot what day it is!” 

“I tell you I have no change!” cried 
John. 

“ Well,” said the driver, “ and what 
then ? I would rather give a man a shillin’ 
on a day like this than put him off with a 
derision like a bawbee. I’m surprised at the 
like of you, Mr. Baigrey!” 

“My name is not Baigrey!” broke out 
John, in mere childish temper and distress. 

“ Ye told me it was yoursel’,” said the 
cabman. 

“ I know I did; and what the devil right 
had you to ask ? ” cried the unhappy one. 

“ Oh, very well,” said the driver. “ I 
know my place, if you know yours — if you 
know yours!” he repeated, as one who 
should imply grave doubt; and muttered 
inarticulate thunders, in which the grand 
old name of gentleman was taken seemingly 
in vain. 

Oh, to have been able to discharge this 
monster, whom John now perceived, with 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

tardy clear-sightedness, to have begun be- 
times the festivities of Christmas! But far 
from any such ray of consolation visiting 
the lost, he stood bare of help and helpers, 
his portmanteau sequestered in one place, 
his money deserted in another and guarded 
by a corpse; himself, so sedulous of privacy, 
the cynosure of all men’s eyes about the 
station; and, as if these were not enough 
mischances, he was now fallen in ill-blood 
with the beast to whom his poverty had 
linked him! In ill-blood, as he reflected dis- 
mally, with the witness who perhaps might 
hang or save him! There was no time to be 
lost; he durst not linger any longer in that 
public spot; and whether he had recourse 
to dignity or conciliation, the remedy must 
be applied at once. Some happily surviving 
element of manhood moved him to the 
former. 

“ Let us have no more of this,” said he, 
his foot once more upon the step. “ Go back 
to where we came from.” 

He had avoided the name of any destina- 
tion, for there was now quite a little band 
of railway folk about the cab, and he still 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

kept an eye upon the court of justice, and la- 
boured to avoid concentric evidence. But here 
again the fatal jarvey outmanoeuvered him. 

“ Back to the Ludge ? ” cried he, in shrill 
tones of protest. 

“Drive on at once!” roared John, and 
slammed the door behind him, so that the 
crazy chariot rocked and jingled. 

Forth trundled the cab into the Christ- 
mas streets, the fare within plunged in the 
blackness of a despair that neighboured on 
unconsciousness, the driver on the box di- 
gesting his rebuke and his customer's du- 
plicity. I would not be thought to put the 
pair in competition; John's case was out of 
all parallel. But the cabman, too, is worth 
the sympathy of the judicious; for he was 
a fellow of genuine kindliness and a high 
sense of personal dignity incensed by drink; 
and his advances had been cruelly and pub- 
licly rebuffed. As he drove, therefore, he 
counted his wrongs, and thirsted for sym- 
pathy and drink. Now, it chanced he had a 
friend, a publican, in Queensferry Street, 
from whom, in view of the sacredness of 
the occasion, he thought he might extradf 

192 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

a dram. Queen sferry Street lies something 
off the dire£f road to Murrayfield. But then 
there is the hilly cross-road that passes by 
the valley of the Leith and the Dean Ceme- 
tery; and Queen sferry Street is on the way 
to that. What was to hinder the cabman, 
since his horse was dumb, from choosing 
the cross-road, and calling on his friend in 
passing? So it was decided; and the char- 
ioteer, already somewhat mollified, turned 
aside his horse to the right. 

John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin 
sunk upon his chest, his mind in abeyance. 
The smell of the cab was still faintly present 
to his senses, and a certain leaden chill 
about his feet; all else had disappeared in 
one vast oppression of calamity and physi- 
cal faintness. It was drawing on to noon — 
two-and-twenty hours since he had broken 
bread; in the interval, he had suffered tor- 
tures of sorrow and alarm, and been partly 
tipsy; and though it was impossible to say 
he slept, yet when the cab stopped and the 
cabman thrust his head into the window, 
his attention had to be recalled from depths 
of vacancy. 


193 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
“ If you'll no' stand me a dram,” said the 
driver, with a well-merited severity of tone 
and manner, “ I dare say ye’ll have no objec- 
tion to my taking one mysel’ ? ” 

“ Yes — no — do what you like,” re- 
turned John; and then, as he watched his 
tormentor mount the stairs and enter the 
whisky-shop, there floated into his mind a 
sense as of something long ago familiar. At 
that he started fully awake, and stared at 
the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them; but 
when? and how? Long since, he thought; 
and then, casting his eye through the front 
glass, which had been recently occluded by 
the figure of the jarvey, he beheld the tree- 
tops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. 
He was close to home — home, where he 
had thought, at that hour, to be sitting in 
the well-remembered drawing-room in 
friendly converse; and, instead — ! 

It was his first impulse to drop into the 
bottom of the cab; his next, to cover his 
face with his hands. So he sat, while the 
cabman toasted the publican, and the pub- 
lican toasted the cabman, and both re- 
viewed the affairs of the nation; so he still 


194 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

sat, when his master condescended to re- 
turn, and drive off at last down-hill, along 
the curve of Lynedoch Place; but even so 
sitting, as he passed the end of his father’s 
street, he took one glance from between 
shielding fingers, and beheld a doctor’s car- 
riage at the door. 

“ Well, just so,” thought he; “ I’ll have 
killed my father! And this is Christmas- 
day! ” 

If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this 
same road he must journey to the grave; 
and down this road, on the same errand, 
his wife had preceded him years before; and 
many other leading citizens, with the proper 
trappings and attendance of the end. And 
now, in that frosty, ill-smelling, straw-car- 
peted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with his 
breath congealing on the glasses, where else 
was John himself advancing to ? 

The thought stirred his imagination, 
which began to manufacture many thou- 
sand pictures, bright and fleeting, like the 
shapes in a kaleidoscope; and now he saw 
himself, ruddy and comfortered, sliding in 
the gutter; and, again, a little woe-begone, 

195 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

bored urchin tricked forth in crape and 
weepers, descending this same hill at the 
foot’s pace of mourning coaches, his moth- 
er’s body just preceding him; and yet again, 
his fancy, running far in front, showed him 
his destination — now standing solitary in 
the low sunshine, with the sparrows hopping 
on the threshold and the dead man within 
staring at the roof — and now, with a sud- 
den change, thronged about with white- 
faced, hand-uplifting neighbors, and dodtor 
bursting through their midst and fixing his 
stethoscope as he went, the policeman shak- 
ing a sagacious head beside the body. It was 
to this he feared that he was driving; in the 
midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard 
himself stammer faint explanations, and 
felt the hand of the constable upon his 
shoulder. Heavens! how he wished he had 
played the manlier part; how he despised 
himself that he had fled that fatal neigh- 
bourhood when all was quiet, and should 
now be tamely travelling back when it was 
thronging with avengers! 

Any strong degree of passion lends, even 
to the dullest, the forces of the imagination. 

196 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

And so now as he dwelt on what was prob- 
ably awaiting him at the end of this dis- 
tressful drive — John, who saw things lit- 
tle, remembered them less, and could not 
have described them at all, beheld in his 
mind's eye the garden of the Lodge, de- 
tailed as in a map; he went to and fro in it, 
feeding his terrors; he saw the hollies, the 
snowy borders, the paths where he had 
sought Alan, the high, conventual walls, the 
shut door — what! was the door shut ? Ay, 
truly, he had shut it — shut in his money, 
his escape, his future life — shut it with 
these hands, and none could now open it! 
He heard the snap of the spring-lock like 
something bursting in his brain, and sat 
astonied. 

And then he woke again, terror jarring 
through his vitals. This was no time to be 
idle; he must be up and doing, he must 
think. Once at the end of this ridiculous 
cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would 
be nothing for it but to turn the cab and 
trundle back again. Why, then, go so far? 
why add another feature of suspicion to a 
case already so suggestive? why not turn 

197 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

at once? It was easy to say, turn; but 
whither ? He had nowhere now to go to; he 
could never — he saw it in letters of blood 
— he could never pay that cab; he was sad- 
dled with that cab forever. Oh, that cab! his 
soul yearned and burned, and his bowels 
sounded to be rid of it. He forgot all other 
cares. He must first quit himself of this ill- 
smelling vehicle and of the human beast 
that guided it — first do that; do that, at 
least; do that at once. 

And just then the cab suddenly stopped, 
and there was his persecutor rapping on the 
front glass. John let it down, and beheld the 
port-wine countenance inflamed with intel- 
lectual triumph. 

"I ken wha ye are!” cried the husky 
voice. “ I mind ye now. Ye’re a Nucholson. 

I drove ye to Hermiston to a Christmas 
party, and ye came back on the box, and I 
let ye drive.” 

It is a fact. John knew the man; they had 
been even friends. His enemy, he now re- 
membered, was a fellow of great good na- 
ture — endless good nature — with a boy; 
why not with a man ? Why not appeal 

198 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

to his better side ? He grasped at the new 
hope. 

“ Great Scott! and so you did,” he cried, 
as if in a transport of delight, his voice 
sounding false in his own ears. “ Well, if 
that’s so, I’ve something to say to you. I’ll 
just get out, I guess. Where are we, any 
way ? ” 

The driver had fluttered his ticket in the 
eyes of the branch-toll keeper, and they 
were now brought to on the highest and 
most solitary part of the by-road. On the 
left, a row of fieldside trees beshaded it; on 
the right, it was bordered by naked fallows, 
undulating downhill to the Queen sferry 
Road; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its 
snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against 
the sky. John looked all about him, drinking 
the clear air like wine; then his eyes re- 
turned to the cabman’s face as he sat, not 
ungleefully, awaiting John’s communica- 
tion, with the air of one looking to be tipped. 

The features of that face were hard to 
read, drink had so swollen them, drink had 
so painted them, in tints that varied from 
brick red to mulberry. The small gray eyes 

199 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greed 
was the ruling passion; and though there 
was some good nature, some genuine kind- 
liness, a true human touch, in the old toper, 
his greed was now so set afire by hope, that 
all other traits of character lay dormant. 
He sat there a monument of gluttonous 
desire. 

John's heart slowly fell. He had opened 
his lips, but he stood there and uttered 
nought. He sounded the well of his courage, 
and it was dry. He groped in his treasury 
of words, and it was vacant. A devil of 
dumbness had him by the throat; the devil 
of terror babbled in his ears; and suddenly, 
without a word uttered, with no conscious 
purpose formed in his will, John whipped 
about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and 
began running for his life across the fallows. 

He had not gone far, he was not past the 
midst of the first field, when his whole brain 
thundered within him, “ Fool! You have 
your watch! ” The shock stopped him, and 
he faced once more toward the cab. The 
driver was leaning over the wall, brandish- 
ing his whip, his face empurpled, roaring 


200 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

like a bull. And John saw (or thought) that 
he had lost the chance. No watch would 
pacify the man's resentment now; he would 
cry for vengeance also. John would be had 
under the eye of the police; his tale would 
be unfolded, his secret plumbed, his destiny 
would close on him at last, and forever. 

He uttered a deep sigh; and just as the 
cabman, taking heart of grace, was begin- 
ning at last to scale the wall, his defaulting 
customer fell again to running, and disap- 
peared into the further fields. 

VIII 

SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTIL- 
ITY OF PASS-KEYS 

Where he ran at first, John never very 
clearly knew; nor yet how long a time 
elapsed ere he found himself in the by-road 
near the lodge of Ravel ston, propped 
against the wall, his lungs heaving like 
bellows, his legs leaden-heavy, his mind 
possessed by one sole desire — to lie down 
and be unseen. He remembered the thick 
coverts round the quarry-hole pond, an un- 


201 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

trodden corner of the world where he might 
surely find concealment till the night should 
fall. Thither he passed down the lane; and 
when he came there, behold! he had for- 
gotten the frost, and the pond was alive 
with young people skating, and the pond- 
side coverts were thick with lookers-on. He 
looked on awhile himself. There was one 
tall, graceful maiden, skating hand in hand 
with a youth, on whom she bestowed her 
bright eyes perhaps too patently; and it 
was strange with what anger John beheld 
her. He could have broken forth in curses; 
he could have stood there, like a mortified 
tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his 
gall upon her by the hour — or so he 
thought; and the next moment his heart 
bled for the girl. “ Poor creature, it’s little 
she knows !” he sighed. '‘Let her enjoy 
herself while she can! ” But was it possible, 
when Flora used to smile at him on the 
Braid ponds, she could have looked so ful- 
some to a sick-hearted bystander ? 

The thought of one quarry, in his frozen 
wits, suggested another; and he plodded off 
toward Craig Leith. A wind had sprung up 


202 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

out of the north-west; it was cruel keen, it 
dried him like a fire, and racked his finger- 
joints. It brought clouds, too; pale, swift, 
hurrying clouds, that blotted heaven and 
shed gloom upon the earth. He scrambled 
up among the hazelled rubbish heaps that 
surround the cauldron of the quarry, and 
lay flat upon the stones. The wind searched 
close along the earth, the stones were cut- 
ting and icy, the bare hazels wailed about 
him; and soon the air of the afternoon be- 
gan to be vocal with those strange and dis- 
mal harpings that herald snow. Pain and 
misery turned in John’s limbs to a harrow- 
ing impatience and blind desire of change; 
now he would roll in his harsh lair, and 
when the flints abraded him, was almost 
pleased; now he would crawl to the edge of 
the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw 
the spiral of the descending roadway, the 
steep crags, the clinging bushes, the pep- 
pering of snow-wreaths, and far down in 
the bottom, the diminished crane. Here, no 
doubt, was a way to end it. But it somehow 
did not take his fancy. 

And suddenly he was aware that he was 

203 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

hungry; ay, even through the tortures of 
the cold, even through the frosts of despair, 
a gross, desperate longing after food, no 
matter what, no matter how, began to wake 
and spur him. Suppose he pawned his 
watch ? But no, on Christmas-day — this 
was Christmas-day! — the pawnshop would 
be closed. Suppose he went to the public- 
house close by at Blackhall, and offered the 
watch, which was worth ten pounds, in pay- 
ment for a meal of bread and cheese ? The 
incongruity was too remarkable; the good 
folks would either put him to the door, or 
only let him in to send for the police. He 
turned his pockets out one after another; 
some San Francisco tram-car checks, one 
cigar, no lights, the pass-key to his father’s 
house, a pocket-handkerchief, with just a 
touch of scent: no, money could be raised on 
none of these. There was nothing for it but 
to starve; and after all, what mattered it ? 
That also was a door of exit. 

He crept close among the bushes, the 
wind playing round him like a lash; his 
clothes seemed thin as paper, his joints 
burned, his skin curdled on his bones. He 


204 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

had a vision of a high-lying cattle-drive in 
California, and the bed of a dried stream 
with one muddy pool, by which the vaque- 
ros had encamped: splendid sun over all, 
the big bonfire blazing, the strips of cow 
browning and smoking on a skewer of wood; 
how warm it was, how savoury the steam 
of scorching meat! And then again he re- 
membered his manifold calamities, and bur- 
rowed and wallowed in the sense of his dis- 
grace and shame. And next he was entering 
Frank's restaurant in Montgomery Street, 
San Francisco; he had ordered a pan-stew 
and venison chops, of which he was immod- 
erately fond, and as he sat waiting, Munroe, 
the good attendant, brought him a whisky 
punch; he saw the strawberries float on the 
dele<ftable cup, he heard the ice chink about 
the straws. And then he woke again to his 
detested fate, and found himself sitting, 
humped together, in a windy combe of 
quarry refuse — darkness thick about him, 
thin flakes of snow flying here and there 
like rags of paper, and the strong shud- 
dering of his body clashing his teeth like a 
hiccough. 


205 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

We have seen John in nothing but the 
stormiest condition ; we have seen him reck- 
less, desperate, tried beyond his moderate 
powers; of his daily self, cheerful, regular, 
not unthrifty, we have seen nothing; and it 
may thus be a surprise to the reader, to 
learn that he was studiously careful of his 
health. This favorite preoccupation now 
awoke. If he were to sit there and die of 
cold, there would be mighty little gained; 
better the police cell and the chances of a 
jury trial; than the miserable certainty of 
death at a dike-side before the next winter’s 
dawn, or death a little later in the gas- 
lighted wards of an infirmary. 

He rose on aching legs, and stumbled 
here and there among the rubbish heaps, 
still circumvented by the yawning crater of 
the quarry; or perhaps he only thought so, 
for the darkness was already dense, the 
snow was growing thicker, and he moved 
like a blind man, and with a blind man's 
terrors. At last he climbed a fence, thinking 
to drop into the road, and found himself 
staggering, instead, among the iron furrows 
of a plowland, endless, it seemed, as a whole 

206 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

county. And next he was in a wood, beat- 
ing among young trees; and then he was 
aware of a house with many lighted win- 
dows, Christmas carriages waiting at the 
doors, and Christmas drivers (for Christ- 
mas has a double edge) becoming swiftly 
hooded with snow. From this glimpse of 
human cheerfulness, he fled like Cain; wan- 
dered in the night, unpiloted, careless of 
whither he went ; fell, and lay, and then rose 
again and wandered further; and at last, 
like a transformation scene, behold him in 
the lighted jaws of the city, staring at a 
lamp which had already donned the tilted 
night-cap of the snow. It came thickly now, 
a “ Feeding Storm;” and while he yet 
stood blinking at the lamp, his feet were 
buried. He remembered something like it 
in the past, a street-lamp crowned and 
caked upon the windward side with snow, 
the wind uttering its mournful hoot, him- 
self looking on, even as now; but the cold 
had struck too sharply on his wits, and 
memory failed him as to the date and sequel 
of the reminiscence. 

His next conscious moment was on the 


207 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

Dean Bridge; but whether he was John 
Nicholson of a bank in a California street, 
or some former John, a clerk in his father’s 
office, he had now clean forgotten. Another 
blank, and he was thrusting his pass-key 
into the door-lock of his father’s house. 

Hours must have passed. Whether 
crouched on the cold stones or wandering 
in the fields among the snow, was more than 
he could tell; but hours had passed. The 
finger of the hall clock was close on twelve; 
a narrow peep of gas in the hall-lamp shed 
shadows; and the door of the back room — 
his father’s room — was open and emitted 
a warm light. At so late an hour, all this 
was strange; the lights should have been 
out, the doors locked, the good folk safe in 
bed. He marvelled at the irregularity, lean- 
ing on the hall-table; and marvelled to him- 
self there; and thawed and grew once more 
hungry, in the warmer air of the house. 

The clock uttered its premonitory catch; 
in five minutes Christmas-day would be 
among the days of the past — Christmas! 
— what a Christmas! Well, there was no 
use waiting; he had come into that house, he 

208 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

scarce knew how; if they were to thrust him 
forth again, it had best be done at once; and 
he moved to the door of the back room and 
entered. 

Oh, well, then he was insane, as he had 
long believed. 

There, in his father's room, at midnight, 
the fire was roaring and the gas blazing; the 
papers, the sacred papers — to lay a hand 
on which was criminal — had all been taken 
off and piled along the floor; a cloth was 
spread, and a supper laid, upon the business 
table; and in his father’s chair a woman, 
habited like a nun, sat eating. As he ap- 
peared in the door-way, the nun rose, gave 
a low cry, and stood staring. She was a 
large woman, strong, calm, a little mascu- 
line, her features marked with courage and 
good sense; and as John blinked at her, a 
faint resemblance dodged about his mem- 
ory, as when a tune haunts us, and yet will 
not be recalled. 

“ Why, it’s John! ” cried the nun. 

“ I dare say I’m mad,” said John, uncon- 
sciously following King Lear; “ but, upon 
my word, I do believe you’re Flora.” 

209 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

" Of course I am,” replied she. 

And yet it is not Flora at all, thought 
John; Flora was slender, and timid, and of 
changing colour, and dewy-eyed; and had 
Flora such an Edinburgh accent ? But he 
said none of these things, which was per- 
haps as well. What he said was, “ Then why 
are you a nun ? ” 

“Such nonsense!” said Flora. “ I’m a 
sick-nurse; and I am here nursing your 
sister, with whom, between you and me, 
there is precious little the matter. But that 
is not the question. The point is: How do 
you come here ? and are you not ashamed 
to show yourself ? ” 

“ Flora,” said John, sepulchrally, “ I 
haven't eaten anything for three days. Or, 
at least, I don’t know what day it is; but I 
guess I’m starving.” 

" You unhappy man! ” she cried. “ Here, 
sit down and eat my supper; and I’ll just 
run up stairs and see my patient, not but 
what I doubt she’s fast asleep; for Maria is 
a malade imaginaire.” 

With this specimen of the French, not of 
Stratford-atte-Bowe, but of a finishing es- 


210 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

tablishment in Moray Place, she left John 
alone in his father’s sanctum. He fell at 
once upon the food; and it is to be supposed 
that Flora had found her patient wakeful, 
and been detained with some details of 
nursing, for he had time to make a full end 
of all there was to eat, and not only to empty 
the teapot, but to fill it again from a kettle 
that was fitfully singing on his father’s fire. 
Then he sat torpid, and pleased, and bewil- 
dered; his misfortunes were then half for- 
gotten; his mind considering, not without re- 
gret, this unsentimental return tohisoldlove. 

He was thus engaged, when that bustling 
woman noiselessly re-entered. 

“ Have you eaten ? ” said she. “ Then tell 
me all about it.” 

It was a long and (as the reader knows) a 
pitiful story; but Flora heard it with com- 
pressed lips. She was lost in none of those 
questionings of human destiny that have, 
from time to time, arrested the flight of my 
own pen; for women, such as she, are no 
philosophers, and behold the concrete only. 
And women, such as she, are very hard on 
the imperfect man. 


21 1 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ Very well/' said she, when he had done; 
“ then down upon your knees at once, and 
beg God's forgiveness." 

And the great baby plumped upon his 
knees, and did as he was bid; and none the 
worse for that! But while he was heartily 
enough requesting forgiveness on general 
principles, the rational side of him distin- 
guished, and wondered if, perhaps, the apol- 
ogy were not due upon the other part. And 
when he rose again from that becoming ex- 
ercise, he first eyed the face of his old love 
doubtfully, and then, taking heart, uttered 
his protest. 

“ I must say, Flora," said he, “ in all this 
business, I can see very little fault of mine." 

“ If you had written home," replied the 
lady, “ there would have been none of it. 
If you had even gone to Murrayfield reason- 
ably sober, you would never have slept 
there, and the worst would not have hap- 
pened. Besides, the whole thing began years 
ago. You got into trouble, and when your 
father, honest man, was disappointed, you 
took the pet, or got afraid, and ran away 
from punishment. Well, you’ve had your 


212 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

own way of it, John, and I don’t suppose 
you like it.” 

“ I sometimes fancy I’m not much better 
than a fool,” sighed John. 

“ My dear John,” said she, “ not much! ” 

He looked at her, and his eye fell. A cer- 
tain anger rose within him; here was a 
Flora he disowned; she was hard; she was 
of a set colour; a settled, mature, undeco ra- 
tive manner; plain of speech, plain of habit 
— he had come near saying, plain of face. 
And this changeling called herself by the 
same name as the many-coloured, clinging 
maid of yore; she of the frequent laughter, 
and the many sighs, and the kind, stolen 
glances. And to make all worse, she took 
the upper hand with him, which (as John 
well knew) was not the true relation of the 
sexes. He steeled his heart against this 
sick-nurse. 

“ And how do you come to be here ? ” he 
asked. 

She told him how she had nursed her 
father in his long illness, and when he died, 
and she was left alone, had taken to nurse 
others, partly from habit, partly to be of 

213 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

some service in the world; partly, it might 
be, for amusement. “ There’s no accounting 
for taste,” said she. And she told him how 
she went largely to the houses of old friends, 
as the need arose; and how she was thus 
doubly welcome, as an old friend first, 
and then as an experienced nurse, to 
whom doctors would confide the gravest 
cases. 

“ And, indeed, it’s a mere farce my being 
here for poor Maria,” she continued; “ but 
your father takes her ailments to heart, and 
I cannot always be refusing him. We are 
great friends, your father and I; he was 
very kind to me long ago — ten years ago.” 

A strange stir came in John’s heart. All 
this while had he been thinking only of him- 
self ? All this while, why had he not written 
to Flora ? In penitential tenderness, he took 
her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it 
remained in his, compliant. A voice told him 
this was Flora, after all — told him so 
quietly, yet with a thrill of singing. 

“ And you never married ? ” said he. 

“ No, John; I never married,” she re- 
plied. 


214 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

The hall clock striking two recalled them 
to the sense of time. 

“ And now,” said she, “ you have been 
fed and warmed, and I have heard your 
story, and now it's high time to call your 
brother.” 

“ Oh! ” cried John, chap-fallen; “ do you 
think that absolutely necessary ? ” 

‘7 can't keep you here; I am a stranger,” 
said she. “ Do you want to run away again ? 
I thought you had enough of that.” 

He bowed his head under the reproof. 
She despised him, he reflected, as he sat 
once more alone; a monstrous thing for a 
woman to despise a man; and strangest of 
all, she seemed to like him. Would his 
brother despise him, too? And would his 
brother like him ? 

And presently the brother appeared, un- 
der Flora's escort; and, standing afar off be- 
side the door-way, eyed the hero of this tale. 

“ So this is you ? ” he said, at length. 

“ Yes, Alick, it’s me — it's John,” re- 
plied the elder brother, feebly. 

“ And how did you get in here ?” inquired 
the younger. 

215 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ Oh, I had my pass-key/' says John. 

“The deuce you had!" said Alexander. 
“ Ah, you lived in a better world! There are 
no pass-keys going now." 

“ Well, father was always averse to 
them," sighed John. And the conversation 
then broke down, and the brothers looked 
askance at one another in silence. 

“ Well, and what the devil are we to do ? " 
said Alexander. “ I suppose if the authori- 
ties got wind of you, you would be taken 
up?" 

“ It depends on whether they've found 
the body or not," returned John. “ And 
then there’s that cabman, to be sure!" 

“ Oh, bother the body! " said Alexander. 
“ I mean about the other thing. That's 
serious." 

“ Is that what my father spoke about ? " 
asked John. “ I don't even know what it is." 

“ About your robbing your bank in Cali- 
fornia, of course," replied Alexander. 

It was plain, from Flora's face, that this 
was the first she had heard of it; it was 
plainer still, from John's, that he was inno- 
cent. 


216 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“I!” he exclaimed. “ I rob my bank! My 
God! Flora, this is too much; even you must 
allow that.” 

“ Meaning you didn't ? ” asked Alexan- 
der. 

“I never robbed a soul in all my days,” 
cried John: “ except my father, if you call 
that robbery; and I brought him back the 
money in this room, and he wouldn’t even 
take it! ” 

“ Look here, John,” said his brother; 
“ let us have no misunderstanding upon 
this. Macewen saw my father; he told him 
a bank you had worked for in San Francisco 
was wiring over the habitable globe to have 
you collared — that it was supposed you 
# had nailed thousands; and it was dead cer- 
tain you had nailed three hundred. So Mac- 
ewen said, and I wish you would be careful 
how you answer. I may tell you also, that 
your father paid the three hundred on the 
spot.” 

“ Three hundred ? ” repeated John. 
“ Three hundred pounds, you mean ? That’s 
fifteen hundred dollars. Why, then, it’s 
Kirkman! ” he broke out. “ Thank Heaven! 


217 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

I can explain all that. I gave them to Kirk- 
man to pay for me the night before I left — 
fifteen hundred dollars, and a letter to the 
manager. What do they suppose I would 
steal fifteen hundred dollars for ? I'm rich; 

I struck it rich in stocks. It's the silliest stuff 
I ever heard of. All that’s needful is to cable 
to the manager: Kirkman has the fifteen 
hundred — find Kirkman. He was a fellow- 
clerk of mine, and a hard case; but to do 
him justice, I didn’t think he was as hard 
as this.” 

“ And what do you say to that, Alick ? ” 
asked Flora. 

“ I say the cablegram shall go to-night ! ” 
cried Alexander, with energy. “ Answer pre- 
paid, too. If this can be cleared away — and * 
upon my word I do believe it can — we shall 
all be able to hold up our heads again. Here, 
you John, you stick down the address of 
your bank manager. You, Flora, you can 
pack John into my bed, for which I have no 
further use to-night. As for me, I am off to 
the post-office, and thence to the High 
Street about the dead body. The police 
ought to know, you see, and they ought to 

218 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

know through John; and I can tell them 
some rigmarole about my brother being a 
man of highly nervous organization, and 
the rest of it. And then, I’ll tell you what, 
John — did you notice the name upon the 
cab ? ” 

John gave the name of the driver, which, 
as 1 have not been able to command the 
vehicle, I here suppress. 

“ Well/’ resumed Alexander, “ I'll call 
round at their place before I come backhand 
pay your shot for you. In that way, before 
breakfast-time, you’ll be as good as new.” 

John murmured inarticulate thanks. To 
see his brother thus energetic in his service 
moved him beyond expression; if he could 
not utter what he felt, he showed it legibly 
in his face; and Alexander read it there, and 
liked it the better in that dumb delivery. 

“ But there’s one thing,” said the latter, 
“ cablegrams are dear; and I dare say you 
remember enough of the governor to guess 
the state of my finances.” 

“ The trouble is,” said John, “that all 
my stamps are in that beastly house.” 

“ All your what ? ” asked Alexander. 

219 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ Stamps — money/' explained John/' It's 
an American expression; I'm afraid I con- 
tradted one or two." 

“ I have some," said Flora. “ I have a 
pound note upstairs.” 

“ My dear Flora," returned Alexander, 
“ a pound note won't see us very far, and 
besides, this is my father’s business, and I 
shall be very much surprised if it isn’t my 
father who pays for it." 

“ I would not apply to him yet; I do not 
think that can be wise," objected Flora. 

“ You have a very imperfedt idea of my 
resources, and none at all of my effrontery," 
replied Alexander. “ Please observe." 

He put John from his way, chose a stout 
knife among the supper things, and with 
surprising quickness broke into his father’s 
drawer. 

“ There’s nothing easier when you come 
to try," he observed, pocketing the money. 

“ I wish you had not done that," said 
Flora. “ You will never hear the last of it." 

“ Oh, I don’t know," returned the young 
man; "the governor is human after all. 
And now, John, let me see your famous 


220 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

pass-key. Get into bed, and don't move for 
any one till I come back. They won't mind 
you not answering when they knock; I gen- 
erally don't myself." 


IX 

IN WHICH MR . NICHOLSON ACCEPTS 
THE PRINCIPLE OF AN 
ALLOWANCE 

In spite of the horrors of the day and the 
tea-drinking of the night, John slept the 
sleep of infancy. He was awakened by the 
maid, as it might have been ten years ago, 
tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was 
painting the east; and as the window was 
to the back of the house, it shone into the 
room with many strange colours of re- 
fracted light. Without, the houses were all 
cleanly roofed with snow; the garden walls 
were coped with it a foot in height; the 
greens lay glittering. Yet strange as snow 
had grown to John during his years upon 
the Bay of San Francisco, it was what he 
saw within that most affe&ed him. For it 
was to his own room that Alexander had 


221 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

been promoted; there was the old paper 
with the device of flowers, in which a cun- 
ning fancy might yet dete£t the face of 
Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John's former 
dominie; there was the old chest of drawers; 
there were the chairs — one, two, three — 
three as before. Only the carpet was new, 
and the litter of Alexander's clothes and 
books and drawing materials, and a pencil- 
drawing on the wall, which (in John's eyes) 
appeared a marvel of proficiency. 

He was thus lying, and looking, and 
dreaming, hanging, as it were, between two 
epochs of his life, when Alexander came to 
the door, and made his presence known in a 
loud whisper. John let him in, and jumped 
back into the warm bed. 

“ Well, John," said Alexander, “ the ca- 
blegram is sent in your name, and twenty 
words of answer paid. I have been to the 
cab office and paid your cab, even saw the 
old gentleman himself, and properly apolo- 
gised. He was mighty placable, and indi- 
cated his belief you had been drinking. 
Then I knocked up old Macewen out of bed, 
and explained affairs to him as he sat and 


222 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
shivered in a dressing-gown. And before that 
I had been to the High Street, where they 
have hea rd nothing of you r dead body, so that 
I incline to the idea that you dreamed it.” 

" Catch me!” said John. 

“ Well, the police never do know any- 
thing,” assented Alexander; “ and at any 
rate, they have dispatched a man to inquire 
and to recover your trousers and your 
money, so that really your bill is now fairly 
clean; and I see but one lion in your path — 
the governor.” 

“ I'll be turned out again, you'll see,” 
said John, dismally. 

“ I don't imagine so,” returned the other; 
“ not if you do what Flora and I have ar- 
ranged; and your business now is to dress, 
and lose no time about it. Is your watch 
right ? Well, you have a quarter of an hour. 
By five minutes before the half hour you 
must be at table, in your old seat, under 
Uncle Duthie's pidfure. Flora will be there 
to keep you countenance; and we shall see 
what we shall see.” 

“ Wouldn't it be wiser for me to stay in 
bed ? ” said John. 


223 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“If you mean to manage your own con- 
cerns, you can do precisely what you like,” 
replied Alexander; “ but if you are not in 
your place five minutes before the half hour 
I wash my hands of you, for one.” 

And thereupon he departed. He had spo- 
ken warmly, but the truth is, his heart was 
somewhat troubled. And as he hung over 
the balusters, watching for his father to 
appear, he had hard ado to keep himself 
braced for the encounter that must follow. 

“ If he takes it well, I shall be lucky,” he 
refle&ed. “ If he takes it ill, why it’ll be a 
herring across John’s tracks, and perhaps 
all for the best. He’s a confounded muff, 
this brother of mine, but he seems a decent 
soul.” 

At that stage a door opened below with 
a certain emphasis, and Mr. Nicholson was 
seen solemnly to descend the stairs, and 
pass into his own apartment. Alexander 
followed, quaking inwardly, but with a 
steady face. He knocked, was bidden to 
enter, and found his father standing in 
front of the forced drawer, to which he 
pointed as he spoke. 


224 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ This is a most extraordinary thing/’ 
said he; “ I have been robbed!” 

“ I was afraid you would notice it,” ob- 
served his son; “it made such a beastly 
hash of the table.” 

“ You were afraid I would notice it ? ” 
repeated Mr. Nicholson. “ And, pray, what 
may that mean ? ” 

“ That I was a thief, sir,” returned Alex- 
ander. “ I took all the money in case the 
servants should get hold of it; and here is 
the change, and a note of my expenditure. 
You were gone to bed, you see, and I did 
not feel at liberty to knock you up; but I 
think when you have heard the circum- 
stances, you will do me justice. The fa<5t is, 
I have reason to believe there has been 
some dreadful error about my brother John ; 
the sooner it can be cleared up the better 
for all parties; it was a piece of business, sir 
— and so I took it, and decided, on my own 
responsibility, to send a telegram to San 
Francisco. Thanks to my quickness we may 
hear to-night. There appears to be no 
doubt, sir, that John has been abominably 
used.” 


225 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

“ When did this take place ? "asked the 
father. 

“ Last night, sir, after you were asleep," 
was the reply. 

“ It's most extraordinary," said Mr. 
Nicholson. “ Do you mean to say you have 
been out all night ? " 

“ All night, as you say, sir. I have been 
to the telegraph and the police office, and 
Mr. Macewen’s. Oh, I had my hands full,” 
said Alexander. 

“ Very irregular," said the father. “ You 
think of no one but yourself." 

“ I do not see that I have much to gain in 
bringing back my elder brother," returned 
Alexander, shrewdly. 

The answer pleased the old man; he 
smiled. “ Well, well, I will go into this after 
breakfast," said he. 

“ I'm sorry about the table," said the 
son. 

“ The table is a small matter; I think 
nothing of that," said the father. 

" It’s another example," continued the 
son, “ of the awkwardness of a man having 
no money of his own. If I had a proper al- 

226 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

lowance, like other fellows of my age, this 
would have been quite unnecessary/' 

“A proper allowance!" repeated his 
father, in tones of blighting sarcasm, for 
the expression was not new to him. “ I 
have never grudged you money for any 
proper purpose." 

“ No doubt, no doubt," said Alexander, 
“ but then you see you ar’n't always on the 
spot to have the thing explained to you. 
Last night for instance " 

“ You could have wakened me last 
night," interrupted his father. 

“Was it not some similar affair that first 
got John into a mess ? " asked the son, skill- 
fully evading the point. 

But the father was not less adroit. “ And 
pray, sir, how did you come and go out of 
the house ? " he asked. 

“ I forgot to lock the door, it seems," re- 
plied Alexander. 

“ I have had cause to complain of that 
too often," said Mr. Nicholson. “ But still 
I do not understand. Did you keep the ser- 
vants up ? " 

“ 1 propose to go into all that at length 

32 7 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

after breakfast,” returned Alexander. 
“ There is the half hour going; we must 
not keep Miss Mackenzie waiting.” 

And greatly daring, he opened the door. 

Even Alexander, who, it must have been 
perceived, was on terms of comparative 
freedom with his parent; even Alexander 
had never before dared to cut short an in- 
terview in this high-handed fashion. But 
the truth is the very mass of his son's de- 
linquencies daunted the old gentleman. He 
was like the man with the cart of apples — 
this was beyond him! That Alexander 
should have spoiled his table, taken his 
money, stayed out all night, and then coolly 
acknowledged all, was something undreamed 
of in the Nicholsonian philosophy, and tran- 
scended comment. The return of the change, 
which the old gentleman still carried in his 
hand, had been a feature of imposing impu- 
dence; it had dealt him a staggering blow. 
Then there was the reference to John's orig- 
inal flight — a subjedt which he always 
kept resolutely curtained in his own mind; 
for he was a man who loved to have made 
no mistakes, and when he feared he might 

228 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

have made one kept the papers sealed. In 
view of all these surprises and reminders, 
and of his son's composed and masterful 
demeanour, there began to creep on Mr. 
Nicholson a sickly misgiving. He seemed be- 
yond his depth; if he did or said anything, 
he might come to regret it. The young man, 
besides, as he had pointed out himself, was 
playing a generous part. And if wrong had 
been done — and done to one who was, 
after, and in spite of, all, a Nicholson — it 
should certainly be righted. 

All things considered, monstrous as it 
was to be cut short in his inquiries, the old 
gentleman submitted, pocketed the change, 
and followed his son into the dining-room. 
During these few steps he once more men- 
tally revolted, and once more, and this time 
finally, laid down his arms: a still, small 
voice in his bosom having informed him 
authentically of a piece of news; that he was 
afraid of Alexander. The strange thing was 
that he was pleased to be afraid of him. He 
was proud of his son; he might be proud of 
him; the boy had character and grit, and 
knew what he was doing. 


229 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

These were his reflections as he turned 
the corner of the dining-room door. Miss 
Mackenzie was in the place of honor, con- 
juring with a tea-pot and a cozy; and, be- 
hold! there was another person present, a 
large, portly, whiskered man of a very com- 
fortable and respectable air, who now rose 
from his seat and came forward; holding 
out his hand. 

“ Good-morning, father,” said he. 

Of the contention of feeling that ran high 
in Mr. Nicholson's starched bosom, no out- 
ward sign was visible; nor did he delay long 
to make a choice of conduCt. Yet in that in- 
terval he had reviewed a great field of pos- 
sibilities both past and future; whether it 
was possible he had not been perfectly wise 
in his treatment of John; whether it was 
possible that John was innocent; whether, 
if he turned John out a second time, as his 
outraged authority suggested, it was pos- 
sible to avoid a scandal; and whether, if he 
went to that extremity, it was possible that 
Alexander might rebel. 

“Hum!” said Mr. Nicholson, and put 
his hand, limp and dead, into John's. 

230 


JOHN NICHOLSON 

And then, in an embarrassed silence, all 
took their places; and even the paper — 
from which it was the old gentleman's habit 
to suck mortification daily, as he marked 
the decline of our institutions — even the 
paper lay furled by his side. 

But presently Flora came to the rescue. 
She slid into the silence with a technicality, 
asking if John still took his old inordinate 
amount of sugar. Thence it was but a step 
to the burning question of the day; and in 
tones a little shaken, she commented on the 
interval since she had last made tea for the 
prodigal, and congratulated him on his re- 
turn. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, 
she congratulated him also in a manner that 
defied hi s ill-humour ; and f rom that launched 
into the tale of John’s misadventures, not 
without some suitable suppressions. 

Gradually Alexander joined; between 
them, whether he would or no, they forced 
a word or two from John; and these fell so 
tremulously, and spoke so eloquently of a 
mind oppressed with dread, that Mr. Nich- 
olson relented. At length even he contrib- 
uted a question: and before the meal was 

231 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
at an end all four were talking even 
freely. 

Prayers followed, with the servants gap- 
ing at this new-comer whom no one had ad- 
mitted; and after prayers there came that 
moment on the clock which was the signal 
for Mr. Nicholson's departure. 

“ John/’ said he, “ of course you will stay 
here. Be very careful not to excite Maria, if 
Miss Mackenzie thinks it desirable that you 
should see her. Alexander, I wish to speak 
with you alone." And then, when they were 
both in the back-room: “ You need not come 
to the office to-day," said he; “ you can stay 
and amuse your brother, and I think it 
would be respectful to call on Uncle Greig. 
And by the bye " (this spoken with a cer- 
tain — dare we say ? — bashfulness), “ I 
agree to concede the principle of an allow- 
ance; and I will consult with Doctor Durie, 
who is quite a man of the world and has 
sons of his own, as to the amount. And, my 
fine fellow, you may consider yourself in 
luck!" he added, with a smile. 

“ Thank you," said Alexander. 

Before noon a detective had restored to 

232 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
John his money, and brought news, sad 
enough in truth, but perhaps the least sad 
possible. Alan had been found in his own 
house in Regent's Terrace, under care of 
the terrified butler. He was quite mad, and 
instead of going to prison, had gone to 
Morningside Asylum. The murdered man, 
it appeared, was an evicted tenant who had 
for nearly a year pursued his late landlord 
with threats and insults; and beyond this, 
the cause and details of the tragedy were 
lost. 

When Mr. Nicholson returned from din- 
ner they were able to put a dispatch into 
his hands: “John V. Nicholson, Randolph 
Crescent, Edinburgh. — Kirkham has dis- 
appeared; police looking for him. All under- 
stood. Keep mind quite easy. — Austin." 
Having had this explained to him, the old 
gentleman took down the cellar key and de- 
parted for two bottles of the 1820 port. 
Uncle Greig dined there that day, and 
Cousin Robina, and, by an odd chance, Mr. 
Macewen; and the presence of these stran- 
gers relieved what might have been other- 
wise a somewhat strained relation. Ere they 

233 


JOHN NICHOLSON 
departed, the family was welded once more 
into a fair semblance of unity. 

In the end of April John led Flora — or, 
as more descriptive, Flora led John — to 
the altar, if altar that may be called which 
was indeed the drawing-room mantel-piece 
in Mr. Nicholson’s house, with the Reverend 
Dr. Durie posted on the hearth-rug in the 
guise of Hymen’s priest. 

The last I saw of them, on a recent visit 
to the north, was at a dinner-party in the 
house of my old friend Gellatly Macbride; 
and after we had, in classic phrase, “ re- 
joined the ladies,” I had an opportunity to 
overhear Flora conversing with another 
married woman on the much canvassed 
matter of a husband’s tobacco. 

“ Oh, yes! ” said she; “ I only allow Mr. 
Nicholson four cigars a day. Three he 
smokes at fixed times — after a meal, you 
know, my dear; and the fourth he can take 
when he likes with any friend.” 

“ Bravo! ” thought I to myself; “ this is 
the wife for my friend John! ” 


234 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 







THE BODY-SNATCHER 

W^0VERY night in the year, four of us 
O sat in the small parlour of the George 
at Debenham — the undertaker, and 
the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Some- 
times there would be more; but blow high, 
blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we 
four would be each planted in his own par- 
ticular arm-chair. Fettes was an old drunk- 
en Scotchman, a man of education obvi- 
ously, and a man of some property, since 
he lived in idleness. He had come to Deben- 
ham years ago, while still young, and by a 
mere continuance of living had grown to be 
an adopted townsman. His blue camlet 
cloak was a local antiquity, like the church- 
spire. His place in the parlour at the George, 
his absence from church, his old, crapulous, 
disreputable vices, were all things of course 
in Debenham. He had some vague Radical 
opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which 
he would now and again set forth and em- 

237 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

phasise with tottering slaps upon the table. 
He drank rum — five glasses regularly every 
evening; and for the greater portion of his 
nightly visit to the George sat, with his 
glass in his right hand, in a state of melan- 
choly alcoholic saturation. We called him 
the Doctor, for he was supposed to have 
some special knowledge of medicine, and had 
been known, upon a pinch, to set a frafture 
or reduce a dislocation; but beyond these 
slight particulars, we had no knowledge of 
his character and antecedents. 

One dark winter night — it had struck 
nine some time before the landlord joined 
us — there was a sick man in the George, a 
great neighbouring proprietor suddenly 
struck down with apoplexy on his way to 
Parliament; and the great man’s still greater 
London do£tor had been telegraphed to his 
bedside. It was the first time that such a 
thing had happened in Debenham, for the 
railway was but newly open, and we were all 
proportionately moved by the occurrence. 

“He’s come,” said the landlord, after he 
had filled and lighted his pipe. 

“He?” said I. “Who? — not the do£tor?” 

238 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

“Himself," replied our host. 

“What is his name?" 

“Dr. Macfarlane,” said the landlord. 

Fettes was far through his third tumbler, 
stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now 
staring mazily around him; but at the last 
word he seemed to awaken, and repeated 
the name “Macfarlane” twice, quietly 
enough the first time, but with sudden emo- 
tion at the second. 

“Yes,” said the landlord, “that's his 
name, Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane.” 

Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes 
awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and 
steady, his language forcible and earnest. 
We were all startled by the transformation, 
as if a man had risen from the dead. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am 
afraid I have not been paying much atten- 
tion to your talk. Who is this Wolfe Mac- 
farlane?” And then, when he had heard the 
landlord out, “It cannot be, it cannot be,” 
he added; “and yet I would like well to see 
him face to face.” 

“Do you know him, Dodtor?” asked the 
undertaker, with a gasp. 


239 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

“God forbid !” was the reply. “And yet 
the name is a strange one; it were too much 
to fancy two. Tell me, landlord, is he old?" 

“Well,” said the host, “he's not a young 
man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but 
he looks younger than you.” 

“He is older, though; years older. But,” 
with a slap upon the table, “it's the rum 
you see in my face — rum and sin. This 
man, perhaps, may have an easy conscience 
and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me 
speak. You would think I was some good, 
old, decent Christian, would you not? But 
no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might 
have canted if he’d stood in my shoes; but 
the brains” — with a rattling fillip on his 
bald head — “the brains were clear and ac- 
tive, and I saw and made no deductions.” 

“If you know this doCtor,” I ventured to 
remark, after a somewhat awful pause, “I 
should gather that you do not share the 
landlord’s good opinion.” 

Fettes paid no regard to me. 

“Yes,” he said, with sudden decision, “I 
must see him face to face.” 

There was another pause, and then a door 

240 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

was dosed rather sharply on the first floor, 
and a step was heard upon the stair. 

“That's the doCtor,” cried the landlord. 
“Look sharp, and you can catch him.” 

It was but two steps from the small par- 
lour to the door of the old George Inn; the 
wide oak staircase landed almost in the 
street; there was room for a Turkey rug and 
nothing more between the threshold and 
the last round of the descent; but this little 
space was every evening brilliantly lit up, 
not only by the light upon the stair and the 
great signal-lamp below the sign, but by 
the warm radiance of the barroom window. 
The George thus brightly advertised itself 
to passers-by in the cold street. Fettes 
walked steadily to the spot, and we, who 
were hanging behind, beheld the two men 
meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to 
face. Dr. Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. 
His white hair set off his pale and placid, 
although energetic, countenance. He was 
richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and 
the whitest of linen, with a great gold watch- 
chain, and studs and spectacles of the same 
precious material. He wore a broad-folded 

241 


THE BODY -SNA TCHER 

tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he 
carried on his arm a comfortable driving- 
coat of fur. There was no doubt but he be- 
came his years, breathing, as he did, of 
wealth and consideration; and it was a sur- 
prising contrast to see our parlour sot — 
bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old 
camlet cloak — confront him at the bottom 
of the stairs. 

“Macfarlane!” he said somewhat loudly, 
more like a herald than a friend. 

The great do6for pulled up short on the 
fourth step, as though the familiarity of the 
address surprised and somewhat shocked his 
dignity. 

“Toddy Macfarlane!” repeated Fettes. 

The London man almost staggered. He 
stared for the swiftest of seconds at the man 
before him, glanced behind him with a sort 
of scare, and then in a startled whisper, 
“ Fettes !” he said, “you!” 

“Ay,” said the other, “me! Did you think 
I was dead too? We are not so easy shut of 
our acquaintance.” 

“Hush, hush!” exclaimed the doftor. 
“Hush, hush! this meeting is so unexpefted 

242 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

— I can see you are unmanned. I hardly 
knew you, I confess, at first ; but I am over- 
joyed — overjoyed to have this opportu- 
nity. For the present it must be how-d’ye- 
do and good-by in one, for my fly is waiting, 
and I must not fail the train; but you shall 

— let me see — yes — you shall give me 
your address, and you can count on early 
news of me. We must do something for you, 
Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we 
must see to that for auld lang syne, as once 
we sang at suppers.” 

“Money!” cried Fettes; “money from 
you! The money that I had from you is 
lying where I cast it in the rain.” 

Dr. Macfarlane had talked himself into 
some measure of superiority and confidence, 
but the uncommon energy of this refusal 
cast him back into his first confusion. 

A horrible, ugly look came and went 
across his almost venerable countenance. 
“My dear fellow,” he said, “be it as you 
please; my last thought is to offend you. 1 
would intrude on none. I will leave you my 
address, however ” 

“ I do not wish it — I do not wish to 


243 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

know the roof that shelters you,” inter- 
rupted the other. “I heard your name; I 
feared it might be you ; I wished to know if, 
after all, there were a God; I know now that 
there is none. Begone!” 

He still stood in the middle of the rug, 
between the stair and doorway; and the 
great London physician, in order to escape, 
would be forced to step to one side. It was 
plain that he hesitated before the thought 
of this humiliation. White as he was, there 
was a dangerous glitter in his spe£tacles; but 
while he still paused uncertain, he became 
aware that the driver of his fly was peering 
in from the street at this unusual scene, and 
caught a glimpse at the same time of our 
little body from the parlour, huddled by the 
corner of the bar. The presence of so many 
witnesses decided him at once to flee. He 
crouched together, brushing on the wains- 
cot, and made a dart like a serpent, strik- 
ing for the door, But his tribulation was not 
yet entirely at an end, for even as he was 
passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and 
these words came in a whisper, and yet pain- 
fully distinct, “Have you seen it again?” 

244 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

The great rich London doctor cried out 
aloud with a sharp, throttling cry; he 
dashed his questioner across the open space, 
and, with his hands over his head, fled out 
of the door like a detected thief. Before it 
had occurred to one of us to make a move- 
ment the fly was already rattling toward 
the station. The scene was over like a 
dream, but the dream had left proofs and 
traces of its passage. Next day the servant 
found the fine gold spedtacles broken on the 
threshold, and that very night we were all 
standing breathless by the barroom window, 
and Fettes at our side, sober, pale and reso- 
lute in look. 

“God protedf us, Mr. Fettes!” said the 
landlord, coming first into possession of his 
customary senses. “What in the universe is 
all this? These are strange things you have 
been saying.” 

Fettes turned toward us; he looked us 
each in succession in the face. “See if you 
can hold your tongues,” said he. “That man 
Macfarlane is not safe to cross; those that 
have done so already have repented it too 
late.” 


245 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

And then, without so much as finishing 
his third glass, far less waiting for the other 
two, he bade us good-by and went forth, 
under the lamp of the hotel, into the black 
night. 

We three turned to our places in the par- 
lour, with the big red fire and four clear 
candles; and as we recapitulated what had 
passed the first chill of our surprise soon 
changed into a glow of curiosity. We sat 
late; it was the latest session I have known 
in the old George. Each man, before we 
parted, had his theory that he was bound to 
prove; and none of us had any nearer busi- 
ness in this world than to track out the past 
of our condemned companion, and surprise 
the secret that he shared with the great 
London do6for. It is no great boast, but I 
believe I was a better hand at worming out 
a story than either of my fellows at the 
George; and perhaps there is now no other 
man alive who could narrate to you the fol- 
lowing foul and unnatural events. 

In his young days Fettes studied medi- 
cine in the schools of Edinburgh. He had 
talent of a kind, the talent that picks up 

246 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

swiftly what it hears and readily retails it 
for its own. He worked little at home; but he 
was civil, attentive, and intelligent in the 
presence of his masters. They soon picked 
him out as a lad who listened closely and 
remembered well ; nay, strange as it seemed 
to me when I first heard it, he was in those 
days well favoured, and pleased by his ex- 
terior. There was, at that period, a certain 
extramural teacher of anatomy, whom I 
shall here designate by the letter K. His 
name was subsequently too well known. 
The man who bore it skulked through the 
streets of Edinburgh in disguise, while the 
mob that applauded at the execution of 
Burke called loudly for the blood of his em- 
ployer. But Mr. K was then at the top 

of his vogue; he enjoyed a popularity due 
partly to his own talent and address, partly 
to the incapacity of his rival, the university 
professor. The students, at least, swore by 
his name, and Fettes believed himself, and 
was believed by others, to have laid the 
foundations of success when he had acquired 
the favour of this meteorically famous man. 
Mr. K was a bon vivant as well as an 


247 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

accomplished teacher; he liked a sly allusion 
no less than a careful preparation. In both 
capacities Fettes enjoyed and deserved his 
notice, and by the second year of his attend- 
ance he held the half-regular position of 
second demonstrator or sub-assistant in his 
class. 

In this capacity, the charge of the theatre 
and ledture-room devolved in particular 
upon his shoulders. He had to answer for 
the cleanliness of the premises and the con- 
duct of the other students, and it was a 
part of his duty to supply, receive, and 
divide the various subjects. It was with a 
view to this last — at that time very deli- 
cate — affair that he was lodged by Mr. 

K in the same wynd, and at last in the 

same building, with the dissedting-rooms. 
Here, after a night of turbulent pleasures, 
his hand still tottering, his sight still misty 
and confused, he would be called out of bed 
in the black hours before the winter dawn 
by the unclean and desperate interlopers 
who supplied the table. He would open the 
door to these men, since infamous through- 
out the land. He would help them with their 

248 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

tragic burden, pay them their sordid price, 
and remain alone, when they were gone, 
with the unfriendly relics of humanity. 
From such a scene he would return to snatch 
another hour or two of slumber, to repair 
the abuses of the night, and refresh himself 
for the labours of the day. 

Few lads could have been more insensible 
to the impressions of a life thus passed 
among the ensigns of mortality. His mind 
was closed against all general considerations. 
He was incapable of interest in the fate and 
fortunes of another, the slave of his own de- 
sires and low ambitions. Cold, light, and 
selfish in the last resort, he had that modi- 
cum of prudence, miscalled morality, which 
keeps a man from inconvenient drunken- 
ness or punishable theft. He coveted, be- 
sides, a measure of consideration from his 
masters and his fellow-pupils, and he had 
no desire to fail conspicuously in the exter- 
nal parts of life. Thus he made it his pleas- 
ure to gain some distinction in his studies, 
and day after day rendered unimpeachable 

eye-service to his employer, Mr. K . 

For his day of work he indemnified himself 

249 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

by nights of roaring, blackguardly enjoy- 
ment; and when that balance had been 
struck, the organ that he called his con- 
science declared itself content. 

The supply of subjedfs was a continual 
trouble to him as well as to his master. In 
that large and busy class, the raw material 
of the anatomists kept perpetually running 
out; and the business thus rendered neces- 
sary was not only unpleasant in itself, but 
threatened dangerous consequences to all 
who were concerned. It was the policy of 
Mr. K to ask no questions in his deal- 

ings with the trade. “They bring the body, 
and we pay the price,” he used to say, dwell- 
ing on the alliteration — “quid pro quo.” 
And again, and somewhat profanely, “Ask 
no questions/* he would tell his assistants, 
“for conscience sake.” There was no under- 
standing that the subjedts were provided by 
the crime of murder. Had that idea been 
broached to him in words, he would have 
recoiled in horror; but the lightness of his 
speech upon so grave a matter was, in itself, 
an offence against good manners, and a 
temptation to the men with whom he dealt. 

250 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

Fettes, for instance, had often remarked to 
himself upon the singular freshness of the 
bodies. He had been struck again and again 
by the hang-dog, abominable looks of the 
ruffians who came to him before the dawn; 
and putting things together clearly in his 
private thoughts, he perhaps attributed a 
meaning too immoral and too categorical to 
the unguarded counsels of his master. He 
understood his duty, in short, to have three 
branches: to take what was brought, to pay 
the price, and to avert the eye from any 
evidence of crime. 

One November morning this policy of 
silence was put sharply to the test. He had 
been awake all night with a racking tooth- 
ache — pacing his room like a caged beast or 
throwing himself in fury on his bed — and 
had fallen at last into that profound, uneasy 
slumber that so often follows on a night of 
pain, when he was awakened by the third 
or fourth angry repetition of the concerted 
signal. There was a thin, bright moonshine; 
it was bitter cold, windy, and frosty; the 
town had not yet awakened, but an inde- 
finable stir already preluded the noise and 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

business of the day. The ghouls had come 
later than usual, and they seemed more than 
usually eager to be gone. Fettes, sick with 
sleep, lighted them upstairs. He heard their 
grumbling Irish voices through a dream; 
and as they stripped the sack from their sad 
merchandise he leaned dozing, with his 
shoulder propped against the wall; he had 
to shake himself to find the men their money. 
As he did so his eyes lighted on the dead 
face. He started; he took two steps nearer, 
with the candle raised. 

‘'God Almighty!” he cried. “That is Jane 
Galbraith!” 

The men answered nothing, but they shuf- 
fled nearer the door. 

“I know her, I tell you,” he continued. 
“She was alive and hearty yesterday. It's 
impossible she can be dead; it’s impossible 
you should have got this body fairly.” 

“Sure, sir, you’re mistaken entirely,” said 
one of the men. 

But the other looked Fettes darkly in the 
eyes, and demanded the money on the spot. 

It was impossible to misconceive the 
threat or to exaggerate the danger. The 

252 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

lad’s heart failed him. He stammered some 
excuses, counted out the sum, and saw his 
hateful visitors depart. No sooner were they 
gone than he hastened to confirm his doubts. 
By a dozen unquestionable marks he identi- 
fied the girl he had jested with the day be- 
fore. He saw, with horror, marks upon her 
body that might well betoken violence. A 
panic seized him, and he took refuge in his 
room. There he refledted at length over the 
discovery that he had made ; considered so- 
berly the bearing of Mr. K ’s instructions 

and the danger to himself of interference in 
so serious a business, and at last, in sore 
perplexity, determined to wait for the ad- 
vice of his immediate superior, the class 
assistant. 

This was a young doctor, Wolfe Macfar- 
lane, a high favourite among all the reckless 
students, clever, dissipated, and unscrupu- 
lous to the last degree. He had travelled and 
studied abroad. His manners were agreeable 
and a little forward. He was an authority on 
the stage, skilful on the ice or the links with 
skate or golf-club; he dressed with nice au- 
dacity, and, to put the finishing touch upon 

253 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

his glory, he kept a gig and a strong trot- 
ting-horse. With Fettes he was on terms of 
intimacy; indeed, their relative positions 
called for some community of life; and when 
subjects were scarce the pair would drive 
far into the country in Macfarlane’s gig, 
visit and desecrate some lonely graveyard, 
and return before dawn with their booty to 
the door of the disseCting-room. 

On that particular morning Macfarlane 
arrived somewhat earlier than his wont. 
Fettes heard him, and met him on the stairs, 
told him his story, and showed him the 
cause of his alarm. Macfarlane examined the 
marks on her body. 

“Yes,” he said with a nod, “it looks 
fishy.” 

“Well, what should I do?” asked 
Fettes. 

“ Do?” repeated the other. “ Do you want 
to do anything? Least said soonest mended, 
I should say.” 

“Some one else might recognize her,” ob- 
jected Fettes. “She was as well known as 
the Castle Rock.” 

“We’ll hope not,” said Macfarlane, “and 
254 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 
if anybody does — well, you didn’t, don’t 
you see, and there’s an end. The faCt is, this 
has been going on too long. Stir up the mud, 

and you’ll get K into the most unholy 

trouble; you’ll be in a shocking box your- 
self. So will I, if you come to that. I should 
like to know how any one of us would look, 
or what the devil we should have to say for 
ourselves, in any Christian witness-box. 
For me, you know there’s one thing certain 
— that, practically speaking, all our sub- 
jects have been murdered.” 

“Macfarlane!” cried Fettes. 

“Come now!” sneered the other. “As if 
you hadn’t suspeCted it yourself!” 

“SuspeCting is one thing ” 

“And proof another. Yes, I know; and 
I’m as sorry as you are this should have 
come here,” tapping the body with his cane. 
“The next best thing for me is not to recog- 
nise it; and,” he added coolly, “I don’t. 
You may, if you please. I don’t dictate, but 
I think a man of the world would do as I do; 

and I may add, I fancy that is what K 

would look for at our hands. The question is, 
Why did he choose us two for his assistants? 

255 . 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 
And I answer, because he didn’t want old 
wives.” 

This was the tone of all others to affe<ft 
the mind of a lad like Fettes. He agreed to 
imitate Macfarlane. The body of the unfor- 
tunate girl was duly dissected, and no one 
remarked or appeared to recognise her. 

One afternoon, when his day’s work was 
over, Fettes dropped into a popular tavern 
and found Macfarlane sitting with a stran- 
ger. This was a small man, very pale and 
dark, with coal-black eyes. The cut of his 
features gave a promise of intellect and re- 
finement which was but feebly realised in his 
manners, for he proved, upon a nearer ac- 
quaintance, coarse, vulgar, and stupid. He 
exercised, however, a very remarkable con- 
trol over Macfarlane; issued orders like the 
Great Bashaw; became inflamed at the least 
discussion or delay, and commented rudely 
on the servility with which he was obeyed. 
This most offensive person took a fancy to 
Fettes on the spot, plied him with drinks, 
and honoured him with unusual confidences 
on his past career. If a tenth part of what he 
confessed were true, he was a very loath- 

256 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

some rogue; and the lad’s vanity was tickled 
by the attention of so experienced a man. 

“I’m a pretty bad fellow myself,” the 
stranger remarked, “but Macfarlane is the 
boy — Toddy Macfarlane I call him. Toddy, 
order your friend another glass.” Or it might 
be, “Toddy, you jump up and shut the 
door.” “Toddy hates me,” he said again. 
“Oh, yes, Toddy, you do!” 

“Don’t you call me that confounded 
name,” growled Macfarlane. 

“Hear him! Did you ever see the lads 
play knife? He would like to do that all over 
my body,” remarked the stranger. 

“We medicals have a better way than 
that,” said Fettes. “When we dislike a dead 
friend of ours, we disseft him.” 

Macfarlane looked up sharply, as though 
this jest were scarcely to his mind. 

The afternoon passed. Gray, for that was 
the stranger’s name, invited Fettes to join 
them at dinner, ordered a feast so sump- 
tuous that the tavern was thrown in commo- 
tion, and when all was done commanded 
Macfarlane to settle the bill. It was late be- 
fore they separated; the man Gray was in- 

257 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 
capably drunk. Macfarlane, sobered by his 
fury, chewed the cud of the money he had 
been forced to squander and the slights he 
had been obliged to swallow. Fettes, with 
various liquors singing in his head, returned 
home with devious footsteps and a mind 
entirely in abeyance. Next day Macfarlane 
was absent from the class, and Fettes smiled 
to himself as he imagined him still squiring 
the intolerable Gray from tavern to tavern. 
As soon as the hour of liberty had struck he 
posted from place to place in quest of his 
last night’s companions. He could find them, 
however, nowhere; so returned early to his 
rooms, went early to bed, and slept the 
sleep of the just. 

At four in the morning he was awakened 
by the well-known signal. Descending to the 
door, he was filled with astonishment to find 
Macfarlane with his gig, and in the gig one 
of those long and ghastly packages with 
which he was so well acquainted. 

“What?” he cried. “Have you been out 
alone? How did you manage?” 

But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bid- 
ding him turn to business. When they had 

258 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

got the body upstairs and laid it on the 
table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were 
going away. Then he paused and seemed to 
hesitate; and then, “ You had better look at 
the face/' said he, in tones of some con- 
straint. “You had better,” he repeated, as 
Fettes only stared at him in wonder. 

“ But where, and how, and when did you 
come by it?” cried the other. 

“ Look at the face,” was the only answer. 

Fettes was staggered; strange doubts as- 
sailed him. He looked from the young doctor 
to the body, and then back again. At last, 
with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had 
almost expected the sight that met his eyes, 
and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in 
the rigidity of death and naked on that 
coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he 
had left well clad and full of meat and sin 
upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even 
in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors 
of the conscience. It was a eras iibi which 
re-echoed in his soul, that two whom he had 
known should have come to lie upon these 
icy tables. Yet these were only secondary 
thoughts. His first concern regarded Wolfe. 

259 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

Unprepared for a challenge so momentous, 
he knew not how to look his comrade in the 
face. He durst not meet his eye, and he 
had neither words nor voice at his com- 
mand. 

It was Macfarlane himself who made the 
first advance. He came up quietly behind 
and laid his hand gently but firmly on the 
other’s shoulder. 

“ Richardson,” said he, “may have the 
head.” 

Now Richardson was a student who had 
long been anxious for that portion of the 
human subject to dissedt. There was no an- 
swer, and the murderer resumed: “Talking 
of business, you must pay me ; your accounts, 
you see, must tally.” 

Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his own: 
“Pay you!” he cried. “Pay you for that?” 

“Why, yes, of course you must. By all 
means and on every possible account, you 
must,” returned the other. “ I dare not give 
it for nothing, you dare not take it for noth- 
ing; it would compromise us both. This is 
another case like Jane Galbraith’s. The more 
things are wrong the more we must a£t as if 

260 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

all were right. Where does old K keep 

his money?” 

“There,” answered Fettes hoarsely, point- 
ing to a cupboard in the corner. 

“Give me the key, then,” said the other, 
calmly, holding out his hand. 

There was an instant's hesitation, and the 
die was cast. Macfarlane could not suppress 
a nervous twitch, the infinitesimal mark of 
an immense relief, as he felt the key between 
his fingers. He opened the cupboard, brought 
out pen and ink and a paper-book that stood 
in one compartment, and separated from the 
funds in a drawer a sum suitable to the oc- 
casion. 

“Now, look here,” he said, “there is the 
payment made — first proof of your good 
faith: first step to your security. You have 
now to clinch it by a second. Enter the pay- 
ment in your book, and then you for your 
part may defy the devil.” 

The next few seconds were for Fettes an 
agony of thought; but in balancing his ter- 
rors it was the most immediate that tri- 
umphed. Any future difficulty seemed al- 
most welcome if he could avoid a present 

261 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

quarrel with Macfarlane. He set down the 
candle which he had been carrying all this 
time, and with a steady hand entered the date, 
the nature, and the amount of the transaction. 

“And now,” said Macfarlane, “it’s only 
fair that you should pocket the lucre. I’ve 
had my share already. By the bye, when a 
man of the world falls into a bit of luck, has 
a few shillings extra in his pocket — I’m 
ashamed to speak of it, but there’s a rule of 
conduct in the case. No treating, no pur- 
chase of expensive class-books, no squaring 
of old debts; borrow, don’t lend.” 

“Macfarlane,” began Fettes, still some- 
what hoarsely, “I have put my neck in a 
halter to oblige you.” 

“To oblige me?” cried Wolfe. “Oh, come! 
You did, as near as I can see the matter, 
what you downright had to do in self-de- 
fence. Suppose I got into trouble, where 
would you be? This second little matter 
flows clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the 
continuation of Miss Galbraith. You can’t 
begin and then stop. If you begin, you must 
keep on beginning; that’s the truth. No rest 
for the wicked.” 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

A horrible sense of blackness and the 
treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul 
of the unhappy student. 

“My God!” he cried, “but what have I 
done? and when did I begin? To be made a 
class assistant — in the name of reason, 
where's the harm in that? Service wanted 
the position; Service might have got 
it. Would he have been where 1 am 
now?” 

“My dear fellow,” said Macfarlane, “what 
a boy you are! What harm has come to you? 
What harm can come to you if you hold your 
tongue? Why, man, do you know what this 
life is? There are two squads of us — the 
lions and the lambs. If you’re a lamb, you’ll 
come to lie upon these tables like Gray or 
Jane Galbraith; if you’re a lion, you’ll live 

and drive a horse like me, like K , like 

all the world with any wit or courage. You’re 

staggered at the first. But look at K ! 

My dear fellow, you’re clever, you have 

pluck. I like you, and K likes you. 

You were born to lead the hunt; and I tell 
you, on my honour and my experience of 
life, three days from now you’ll laugh at all 

263 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

these scarecrows like a high-school boy at a 
farce/' 

And with that Macfarlane took his depar- 
ture and drove off up the wynd in his gig to 
get under cover before daylight. Fettes was 
thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the 
miserable peril in which he stood involved. 
He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that 
there was no limit to his weakness, and that, 
from concession to concession, he had fallen 
from the arbiter of Macfarlane's destiny to 
his paid and helpless accomplice. He would 
have given the world to have been a little 
braver at the time, but it did not occur to 
him that he might still be brave. The secret 
of Jane Galbraith and the cursed entry in 
the daybook closed his mouth. 

Hours passed; the class began to arrive; 
the members of the unhappy Gray were 
dealt out to one and to another, and re- 
ceived without remark. Richardson was 
made happy with the head; and before the 
hour of freedom rang Fettes trembled with 
exultation to perceive how far they had 
already gone toward safety. 

For two days he continued to watch, with 

264 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

increasing joy, the dreadful process of dis- 
guise. 

On the third day Macfarlane made his 
appearance. He had been ill, he said; but he 
made up for lost time by the energy with 
which he direfted the students. To Rich- 
ardson in particular he extended the most 
valuable assistance and advice, and that 
student, encouraged by the praise of the 
demonstrator, burned high with ambitious 
hopes, and saw the medal already in his 
grasp. 

Before the week was out Macfarlane's 
prophecy had been fulfilled. Fettes had out- 
lived his terrors and had forgotten his base- 
ness. He began to plume himself upon his 
courage, and had so arranged the story in 
his mind that he could look back on these 
events with an unhealthy pride. Of his ac- 
complice he saw but little. They met, of 
course, in the business of the class; they 
received their orders together from Mr. 

K . At times they had a word or two in 

private, and Macfarlane was from first to 
last particularly kind and jovial. But it was 
plain that he avoided any reference to their 

265 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

common secret; and even when Fettes whis- 
pered to him that he had cast in his lot with 
the lions and foresworn the lambs, he only 
signed to him smilingly to hold his peace. 

At length an occasion arose which threw 
the pair once more into a closer union. Mr. 

K was again short of subjects; pupils 

were eager, and it was a part of this teacher’s 
pretensions to be always well supplied. At 
the same time there came the news of a 
burial in the rustic graveyard of Glencorse. 
Time has little changed the place in ques- 
tion. It stood then, as now, upon a cross 
road, out of call of human habitations, and 
buried fathoms deep in the foliage of six 
cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon 
the neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon 
either hand, one loudly singing among peb- 
bles, the other dripping furtively from pond 
to pond, the stir of the wind in mountainous 
old flowering chestnuts, and once in seven 
days the voice of the bell and the. old tunes 
of the precentor, were the only sounds that 
disturbed the silence around the rural 
church. The Resurredtion Man — to use a 
byname of the period — was not to be de- 

266 


THE BODY -SNA TCHER 

terred by any of the sanCtities of customary 
piety. It was part of his trade to despise and 
desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old 
tombs, the paths worn by the feet of wor- 
shippers and mourners, and the offerings 
and the inscriptions of bereaved affeCtion. 
To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is 
more than commonly tenacious, and where 
some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the 
entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, 
far from being repelled by natural respeCt, 
was attracted by the ease and safety of the 
task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, 
in joyful expectation of a far different awak- 
ening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, ter- 
ror-haunted resurrection of the spade and 
mattock. The coffin was forced, the cere- 
ments torn, and the melancholy relics, clad 
in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on 
moonless byways, were at length exposed to 
uttermost indignities before a class of gap- 
ing boys. 

Somewhat as two vultures may swoop 
upon a dying lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane 
were to be let loose upon a grave in that 
green and quiet resting-place. The wife of a 

267 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

farmer, a woman who had lived for sixty 
years, and been known for nothing but good 
butter and a godly conversation, was to be 
rooted from her grave at midnight and car- 
ried, dead and naked, to that far-away city 
that she had always honoured with her Sun- 
day’s best; the place beside her family was 
to be empty till the crack of doom; her inno- 
cent and almost venerable members to be 
exposed to that last curiosity of the anato- 
mist. 

Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well 
wrapped in cloaks and furnished with a for- 
midable bottle. It rained without remission 
— a cold, dense, lashing rain. Now and 
again there blew a puff of wind, but these 
sheets of falling water kept it down. Bottle 
and all, it was a sad and silent drive as far 
as Penicuik, where they were to spend the 
evening. They stopped once, to hide their 
implements in a thick bush not far from the 
churchyard, and once again at the Fisher’s 
Tryst, to have a toast before the kitchen 
fire and vary their nips of whisky with a 
glass of ale. When they reached their jour- 
ney’s end the gig was housed, the horse was 

268 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

fed and comforted, and the two young doc- 
tors in a private room sat down to the best 
dinner and the best wine the house afforded. 
The lights, the fire, the beating rain upon 
the window, the cold, incongruous work that 
lay before them, added zest to their enjoy- 
ment of the meal. With every glass their 
cordiality increased. Soon Macfarlane handed 
a little pile of gold to his companion. 

‘'A compliment/’ he said. “ Between 

friends these little d d accommodations 

ought to fly like pipe-lights.” 

Fettes pocketed the money, and ap- 
plauded the sentiment to the echo. “You 
are a philosopher,” he cried. “ I was an ass 

till I knew you. You and K between 

you, by the Lord Harry! but you’ll make a 
man of me.” 

“Of course, we shall,” applauded Mac- 
farlane. “A man? I tell you, it required a 
man to back me up the other morning. 
There are some big, brawling, forty-year-old 
cowards who would have turned sick at the 

look of the d d thing; but not you — you 

kept your head. I watched you.” 

“Well, and why not?” Fettes thus 

269 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

vaunted himself. “It was no affair of mine. 
There was nothing to gain on the one side 
but disturbance, and on the other I could 
count on your gratitude, don’t you see?” 
And he slapped his pocket till the gold 
pieces rang. 

Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch 
of alarm at these unpleasant words. He may 
have regretted that he had taught his young 
companion so successfully, but he had no 
time to interfere, for the other noisily con- 
tinued in this boastful strain: 

“The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, 
between you and me, I don’t want to hang 
— that’s pra£tical; but for all cant, Macfar- 
lane, I was born with a contempt. Hell, God, 
Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime, and all the 
old gallery of curiosities — they may fright- 
en boys, but men of the world, like you and 
me, despise them. Here’s to the memory of 
Gray!” 

It was by this time growing somewhat 
late. The gig, according to order, was 
brought round to the door with both lamps 
brightly shining, and the young men had to 
pay their bill and take the road. They an- 
270 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

nounced that they were bound for Peebles, 
and drove in that direction till they were 
clear of the last houses of the town; then, 
extinguishing the lamps, returned upon 
their course, and followed a by-road toward 
Glencorse. There was no sound but that of 
their own passage, and the incessant, stri- 
dent pouring of the rain. It was pitch dark; 
here and there a white gate or a white stone 
in the wall guided them for a short space 
across the night; but for the most part it was 
at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they 
picked their way through that resonant 
blackness to their solemn and isolated des- 
tination. In the sunken woods that traverse 
the neighbourhood of the burying-ground 
the last glimmer failed them, and it became 
necessary to kindle a match and reillumine 
one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under 
the dripping trees, and environed by huge 
and moving shadows, they reached the scene 
of their unhallowed labours. 

They were both experienced in such af- 
fairs, and powerful with the spade; and they 
had scarce been twenty minutes at their task 
before they were rewarded by a dull rattle 

271 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

on the coffin lid. At the same moment Mac- 
farlane, having hurt his hand upon a stone, 
flung it carelessly above his head. The grave, 
in which they now stood almost to the 
shoulders, was close to the edge of the pla- 
teau of the graveyard; and the gig lamp had 
been propped, the better to illuminate their 
labours, against a tree, and on the imme- 
diate verge of the steep bank descending to 
the stream. Chance had taken a sure aim 
with the stone. Then came a clang of broken 
glass; night fell upon them; sounds alter- 
nately dull and ringing announced the 
bounding of the lantern down the bank, and 
its occasional collision with the trees. A 
stone or two, which it had dislodged in its 
descent, rattled behind it into the profundi- 
ties of the glen; and then silence, like night, 
resumed its sway; and they might bend 
their hearing to its utmost pitch, but naught 
was to be heard except the rain, now march- 
ing to the wind, now steadily falling over 
miles of open country. 

They were so nearly at an end of their 
abhorred task that they judged it wisest to 
complete it in the dark. The coffin was ex- 

272 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

humed and broken open; the body inserted 
in the dripping sack and carried between 
them to the gig; one mounted to keep it in 
its place, and the other, taking the horse by 
the mouth, groped along by wall and bush 
until they reached the wider road by the 
Fisher’s Tryst. Here was a faint, diffused 
radiancy, which they hailed like daylight; 
by that they pushed the horse to a good pace 
and began to rattle along merrily in the di- 
rection of the town. 

They had both been wetted to the skin 
during their operations, and now, as the gig 
jumped among the deep ruts, the thing that 
stood propped between them fell now upon 
one and now upon the other. At every repe- 
tition of the horrid contact each instinc- 
tively repelled it with the ‘greater haste; and 
the process, natural although it was, began 
to tell upon the nerves of the companions. 
Macfarlane made some ill-favoured jest 
about the farmer’s wife, but it came hol- 
lowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop 
in silence. Still their unnatural burden 
bumped from side to side; and now the head 
would be laid, as if in confidence, upon their 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

shoulders, and now the drenching sackcloth 
would flap icily about their faces. A creeping 
chill began to possess the soul of Fettes. He 
peered at the bundle, and it seemed somehow 
larger than at first. All over the country- 
side, and from every degree of distance, the 
farm dogs accompanied their passage with 
tragic ululations; and it grew and grew upon 
his mind that some unnatural miracle had 
been accomplished, that some nameless 
change had befallen the dead body, and that 
it was in fear of their unholy burden that 
the dogs were howling. 

“ For God’s sake,” said he, making a great 
effort to arrive at speech, “for God’s sake, 
let’s have a light!” 

Seemingly Macfarlane was affe£fed in the 
same direction; for, though he made no re- 
ply, he stopped the horse, passed the reins 
to his companion, got down, and proceeded 
to kindle the remaining lamp. They had by 
that time got no farther than the cross-road 
down to Auchenclinny. The rain still poured 
as though the deluge were returning, and it 
was no easy matter to make a light in such 
a world of wet and darkness. When at last 
274 


THE BODY-SNATCHER 

the flickering blue flame had been trans- 
ferred to the wick and began to expand and 
clarify, and shed a wide circle of misty 
brightness round the gig, it became possible 
for the two young men to see each other and 
the thing they had along with them. The 
rain had moulded the rough sacking to 
the outlines of the body underneath; the 
head was distindt from the trunk, the 
shoulders plainly modelled; something at 
once spedtral and human riveted their 
eyes upon the ghastly comrade of their 
drive. 

For some time Macfarlane stood motion- 
less, holding up the lamp. A nameless dread 
was swathed, like a wet sheet, about the 
body, and tightened the white skin upon 
the face of Fettes; a fear that was meaning- 
less, a horror of what could not be, kept 
mounting to his brain. Another beat of the 
watch, and he had spoken. But his comrade 
forestalled him. 

“That is not a woman/' said Macfarlane, 
in a hushed voice. 

“It was a woman when we put her in,” 
whispered Fettes. 


275 


THE BOD Y-SNA TCHER 

“Hold that lamp/’ said the other. “I 
must see her face/’ 

And as Fettes took the lamp his com- 
panion untied the fastenings of the sack and 
drew down the cover from the head. The 
light fell very clear upon the dark, well- 
moulded features and smooth-shaven cheeks 
of a too familiar countenance, often beheld 
in dreams of both of these young men. A 
wild yell rang up into the night; each leaped 
from his own side into the roadway; the 
lamp fell, broke, and was extinguished; and 
the horse, terrified by this unusual commo- 
tion, bounded and went off toward Edin- 
burgh at a gallop, bearing along with it, sole 
occupant of the gig, the body of the dead 
and long-disse£ted Gray. 



































































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